


Call Me Blade

by Sehnyusucht



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, 2014-2015 Figure Skating Season, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Mention of Death, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 60,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27288799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sehnyusucht/pseuds/Sehnyusucht
Summary: “Okay,” he said in a quite inaudible whisper. “Okay, Yuri.”“My name’s not Yuri,” Yuzuru replied, his voice a whisper as well, but dark and disturbing like a distant shout. “Call me Blade.”
Relationships: Javier Fernández & Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernández/Yuzuru Hanyu
Comments: 168
Kudos: 117





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emilia_kaisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilia_kaisa/gifts).



> Hello everyone. It's quite a longtime that I don't post anything, and now I'm starting to post a quite long fic. It's finished, I'm just re-reading it, so if you like it don't worry: you will read a whole story.  
> Please note that right in this first chapter I talk about the great earthquake that hit Japan and particularly Sendai in 2011. There's nothing too graphic, but I mention fear, panic, and death.  
> Thanks to my lovely beta LadyLightning, who's very busy but is finding some time to help me and my poor English.  
> Emilia_Kaisa, this fic is for you, who helped me with your suggestions and your beautiful friendship.  
> I hope you'll like this story. All the best to all of you in these dark times <3

_Sendai, the 11th of March, 2011, h. 02:43:18 pm_.

_Dry air in his lungs. The cold is a wind subsiding an instant before touching his body, blocked by the heat that his sweaty skin is spreading. Under his blades, the ice is so smooth, so nice that he might levitate in the air – just one or two inches – if only he skated a little bit faster. He can’t, though; he can’t skate faster, if he wants to jump and land a correct quad Toe loop._

_Counter three, toe-pick._

_Jump._

_He tightens his arms against his chest to increase his rotation speed._

_One, two, three, four rotations._

_He lands – a sharp bump of the blade, resonating through his ankle, up to his knee that he bends as much as he can to exit the jump without losing too much speed, and he glides gently away, without quite scratching the ice._

_The sound of clapping hands, muffled by woolen gloves._

_“Another perfect one, Yuzu-kun!” his coach says. Yuzuru can feel the pride and the joy in her voice, and he skates toward her with a big grin on his face._

_“It was good, wasn’t it?” he asks._

_“It was very good, just like all the others you did in the last weeks.” Nanami Abe-sensei looks serious now, but a smile still sparkles in her eyes. “Next season you’re going to compete again,” she says, her voice sure and low – the voice of someone who’s giving some very important, beautiful news. “And you’re going to compete with seniors.”_

_“Compete with seniors,” Yuzuru echoes her words. His voice is much less sure than hers, rippled with emotion. “Finally.”_

_Yes, finally. An outstanding debut in some Juniors competitions, the first medals, the first international acknowledgements, then his asthma got worse, and for two years Yuzuru had to do endless treatments instead of competing, to live in a sanatorium for months instead of skating. Now he’s much better, though. He’s back to skating and to competitions, too: his third place at the last National Championships is only the beginning._

_“If you go on like that, I bet you can aim for the Grand Prix Final. And for the World Championships top five, why not.” Nanami Abe-sensei is smiling again – a smile full of affection, pride and what Yuzuru think it’s a bit of melancholy._

_“I can make it,” he says. Only seven months ago he was in a sanatorium, and now he can jump a quad Toe loop, and land it nine times out of ten. Oh yes, he will make it._

_Nanami Abe-sensei takes his hand and holds it between hers._

_“Yuzu, if you make it to the Grand Prix Final and to the World’s top five…” she stops talking for a moment, holding his hand tighter, “then you will have to go away from here.”_

_Yuzuru swallows._

_“To Brian Orser?” he asks, but he knows the answer already. His coach nods._

_“He’s the best,” she says. “And Toronto will be much better than Sendai for your asthma too.”_

_Toronto. The Cricket Club, and Brian Orser. Since he saw Yuna Kim win the 2010 Olympic Games, Yuzuru has dreamed of practicing in that bright rink, full of windows and mirrors but without boards. He googles it nearly every day, and fantasizes. About living in a place where he doesn’t feel like his lungs are too often going to block up, where a former top ice dancer like Tracy Wilson will help him to improve his skating skills and a former top skater like Brian Orser will help him to improve his triple Axel, and where the Spanish rising star, Javier Fernández, will show him how to jump a perfect quad Salchow…_

_“We better go now.” Nanami Abe-sensei stops abruptly his daydreaming and lets go of his hand. “I should have gone home half an hour ago, but then your quad Toe loops…”_

_“I’m so sorry, sensei.” Yuzuru bows, feeling his cheeks blushing. “It’s just that… I would never stop skating, sorry.”_

_The softness of her gaze is quite unbearable._

_“I know, Yuzu-kun, I know, and it’s perfectly fine,” she reassures him. “But now go and shower, right? Aren’t you supposed to celebrate your grandpa’s birthday, tonight?”_

_“Oh God, oh God, that’s true!” How could he forget it? The celebrations for his grandpa’s birthday have been planned at this time of the day just in order not to bother him and his practice, his whole family is waiting for him, and he’s late. What a bad grandson he is. “See you tomorrow, Nanami-sensei!”_

_“See you, Yuzu-kun!”_

_Yuzuru skates away, rushing to the far side of the rink to go to the locker room._

_First, he hears the noise._

_At the beginning, a subterranean buzz, then a louder sound, louder and louder, like an engine or a scream – but now it’s a roar, and with it comes a tremor, like the world is shivering, and quivering, and shaking. Shaking. Yuzuru hears his breath shaking with the world, then he sees a crack opening up in the ice between his skates._

_“Yuzuru, run!” a voice behind him yells, or just in his head maybe, and –_

8th of August, 2014, h. 8:19:56 pm.

“Hey.”

A voice behind him, or just in his head maybe, or at the edge of his consciousness.

“Hey!”

A hand was shaking him. Yuzuru slowly raised his head and his eyelids, still oblivious to where he was.

“Is it alright, Yuri? You had a nightmare, I think. You shifted like in your seat like a freaking madman.”

Yuri, the fake name he had used to introduce himself. Ben, the driver who’d given him a lift from Detroit. The cab of Ben’s truck, papered with football players photos. Okay.

“Yeah, sorry,” Yuzuru managed to say. He was thirsty, hungry and exhausted, despite sleeping.

Ben shrugged. “Anyway, here we are,” he said.

Yuzuru snapped his head toward the window, his heart beating suddenly too fast: a residential area with small houses and green yards, skyscrapers back in the distance. It could have been any Western town, but it wasn’t: it was his destination, and his goal. The only one left in his life. It had taken him over three years to get there. Now there he was, and he didn’t know what he should feel: relief, joy? Actually, he didn’t feel anything but his mad heartbeat.

“Where should I drop you?” Ben asked.

It was over three years that Yuzuru carried that address with him, like his dearest precious. His goal, his destination. But he didn’t want to get there like that, dirty and tired: it might be foolish and useless, but he wanted to be clean and well rested; as _normal_ as he could be.

“Do you know some… some public bath, or shower?” he asked.

Ben turned and stared at him, then he looked back at the road, reluctantly, as if driving was suddenly a tiring task for him.

“So it’s not true that there’s someone waiting for you, here in town,” he said.

“I said there’s a place waiting for me, not a person,” Yuzuru corrected him.

Again, Ben stared at him, for a longer moment, then he chuckled.

“You’re quite a weird kid, aren’t you?” he said, then stopped chuckling and turned serious. “Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t even know if something like a _public shower_ exists, here,” he said. “Anyway, it wouldn’t be a good idea to go there, for someone like you.”

“Like me?”

Ben shrugged. “Too young, too delicate.” He tilted his head with a small smile. “Too beautiful.”

“I know how to defend myself.”

“Uh, I see.”

You don’t, Yuzuru thought, but maybe you will. He picked up the old cross-body sack he’d been keeping at his feet and put it in his lap.

“Can you take me to Avenue Road, then?” he asked. An address close to his real destination: he didn’t want a stranger like Ben to know where he was truly going. He had learned this address by heart two weeks ago, when he was able to sit in front of a PCand have a look at Google Maps. He remembered there was a pizzeria as well, there: he had enough money to eat something, and he could wash himself in the restroom. Otherwise, there was a park: the sun was setting, as soon as it was dark he could make do with the water of a fountain. It wasn’t safe to stay in a park at night, but – as Ben could _not_ see – he knew how to defend himself. He tightened his grip around the cotton of his sack.

“No problem,” Ben said. “It’s close to my place.”

“What a coincidence,” Yuzuru said, with flat irony.

“True!” Ben chuckled again. “Anyway, it’s quite far from here and the streets are jammed at this time of the day. We’ll be there in half an hour, I guess.”

“Thank you.” Yuzuru loosened the laces of his sack.

Driving across the town took them ages. What with the emotion of being finally there, what with Ben trying to talk and find out something more about him, the digital clock on the dashboard seemed slower than a snail. 8,55. 8,56. Minutes were tiringly dragging on, the truck moving slowly between high-rises and neon signs Yuzuru had seen in too many towns to look as special as his goal. As the destination he’d been travelling to, through pain and dangers, for over three years.

“Here we are!” Ben announced finally, and pulled over. “It didn’t take too long, right? But…” He put his elbows on the steering wheel and looked beyond the windshield, “are you sure that _this_ is the place?”

Avenue Road was broad, lined up with big buildings and nearly no shops; only a handful of street lamps were fighting against the dark.

“It’s okay,” Yuzuru said. “Thank you for everything.” He was about to open the truck door when he felt Ben’s hand on his forearm. He turned back to him: in Ben’s eyes he saw uncertainty. And want.

“Look…” also Ben’s voice was full of uncertainty and want, also Ben’s hand, “why don’t you come to my place? I can…”

“No. Thank you anyway.”

Ben looked down, and for a moment Yuzuru hoped it was over. But then Ben looked up again, uncertainty retreating and want growing bigger.

“Listen to me, please,” he insisted. “I live on my own. My flat is neither big nor cozy, but it’s clean. Warm. You can have a shower. You can eat.” Ben’s hand left Yuzuru’s forearm, only to take and hold his hand. “You can sleep in a real bed.”

Yuzuru considered the proposal, while Ben’s thumb was slowly caressing the back of his hand. Okay, he was tempted. Eating properly, having a long, hot shower, sleeping in a warm bed. Maybe he would get some sort of gift: a pullover, a pair of new socks. What Ben was offering him, though, wasn’t for free: it was not a gift, but a barter. And Yuzuru wanted to get to his final, special destination clean – outside, but inside as well.

“You’re very kind,” he said, freeing his hand from Ben’s, “but I’d rather not.”

“Why not?” Ben ran a finger on Yuzuru’s neck. “After all, I’m offering many things and I don’t ask that much in return. Just some company.” He leaned closer to Yuzuru, the want in his eyes all-encompassing. Yuzuru grabbed his sack even more tightly and pushed his back against the door.

“I don’t want any company,” he said, “I just want to get out of this truck. Leave m…”

“I took you here,” Ben was breathing on Yuzuru’s mouth by now, “I drove you for hundreds of miles, I bought you food and drinks, I let you sleep… is this how you thank someone who helped you so much?” He pushed his knee between Yuzuru’s legs.

“Don’t.”

“You’re not so young _not_ to know that you’re supposed to reciprocate favors, mhm?” With his thick, strong fingers, Ben grabbed Yuzuru’s nape. “You little bitch, you should…”

Yuzuru sank his teeth into Ben’s wrist. As soon as the other lost his grip on him, shouting in pain and surprise, he plunged one hand in his sack and with the other one pressed Ben’s forehead on the dashboard, a feral scream rising from his throat –

_– a feral scream is rising from his own throat, while the earth is shaking so hard that he keeps on falling, while the earth is scrambling under his feet, cracks so wide they could swallow him. Yuzuru runs, as fast as he can despite the quake and the skates he still wears, he runs toward what was and hopefully still is the exit, the roar from inside the earth is deafening but down there there’s the ice hall door or what remains of it, Yuzuru avoids debris and falling things, he doesn’t even know what they are but he doesn’t wonder about them, he has no time to wonder about anything, he runs as fast as he can on the blades of his skates and when he’s out – finally, finally! – for a moment he wants to believe it’s over, he wants to believe that the world outside the ice hall is still and quiet, but it isn’t, the world has turned into shakes and thunders, and Yuzuru runs and stumbles and falls and stands up and jumps and crushes into people and things, his skates hitting hard against the concrete, and he thinks home!_ Home! _, they are all there, mom and dad and Saya and his grandparents, but a noise sounding louder and more terrifying than all the noises of the underworld put together, a noise coming from behind makes him stop and turn and look and the ice hall isn’t there anymore, it was there and now it’s just smoke and cough and pain, Nanami-sensei!, Yuzuru screams, or maybe he only thinks he’s screaming, and he’s running back when he hears kind of a creaking sound, isn’t it too loud to be only a creak?, and it’s close, too close, so Yuzuru looks up and he has just a couple of seconds to run away before a balcony falls down on him, everything is falling down,_ everything _, mom dad Saya grandma grandpa, Yuzuru thinks, so he takes quickly off his skates, cutting his palms and fingers with the blades, then with his skates thrown on a shoulder he runs in his socks, he runs runs runs through a nightmare out of time and out of space, and in the end he’s in front of the building where he lives, where his whole family is waiting for him._

_He stops._

_Where his whole family_ was _waiting for him_.

_He starts screaming again._

Ben started screaming the moment he saw the rusty blade Yuzuru was holding against his neck.

“Oh my God! Please, don’t! Please…”

“ _Don’t_ , what?” Yuzuru pushed the blade a little more against Ben’s skin. “Don’t kill me? Don’t hurt me? You didn’t care about hurting me, though. You wanted to fuck me, didn’t you? You wanted to fuck me, even if I’m _too young_ , even if I’m _too delicate_. Mhm?”

“Please.” Ben wasn’t screaming anymore; he was feebly whining, his eyes shut. “Take my wallet, it’s in my jeans back pocket. Take it, and take all the money, but…”

“I don’t give a shit about your money, but don’t you dare put your hands on me, right? Don’t put your hands on me _ever again_.”

“Okay. Okay, yes. I’m sorry.”

Yuzuru lifted the blade, put it back in his sack without loosening the grip of his other hand on Ben’s nape; then he opened the door.

“Thank you for giving me a ride,” he said when he put his feet on the ground. Ben was still keeping his forehead pressed on the wheel, his eyes shut. “Now go away, and don’t look back at me.”

Ben opened up his eyes, straightening slowly.

“Okay,” he said in a quite inaudible whisper. “Okay, Yuri.”

“My name’s not Yuri,” Yuzuru replied, his voice a whisper as well, but dark and disturbing like a distant shout. “Call me Blade.”

Fear flashed again in Ben’s eyes; a few seconds, then the truck was gone. Yuzuru watched it disappear behind a corner, then threw his sack over his shoulder, sighed, and started walking toward his final destination.

141, Wilson Avenue.

The Toronto Cricket Club.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who knows, maybe when you’ll date someone who will be also your best friend, it will mean that you are really, definitely in love

_2 nd of October, 2014._

Javier laced his sneakers, stood up, threw his sport bag over his shoulder and walked out of the locker room. What time was it? 6,27 pm. Good: he could make it on time and get the bus at 6,35; at home, he could do the laundry and even relax for about an hour before getting ready and having dinner with Cortney.

Cortney.

A fancy, probably a tad too expensive restaurant, a conversation that was supposed to be brilliant and warm, a hand in hand walk exchanging casual kisses, a couple of drinks somewhere (with acceptable music in the background, hopefully), sex. Where? At Cortney’s place, Javier was hoping, so that afterwards he could apologize and go back home: honey, I’d love to sleep here with you, but you know, I have practice tomorrow morning… walking down the hall leading from the locker rooms to the Toronto Cricket Club’s cafeteria, Javier shook his head: since when, exactly, had the thought of hanging out with his girlfriend stopped being alluring? They should talk about it; but it was hard to talk with Cortney about something Javier didn’t feel ready to talk about even with himself.

“Javi.”

Javier stopped: leaned against the counter, with the usual pineapple juice in front of him and his cheeks pink with cold, Brian was grinning at him.

“Hey.” Javier walked to his coach. “Am I the reason for your big grin? Or did you find out that pineapple juice _really_ helps to get thinner?”

“You silly.” Brian pretended to punch him under his chin. “You’re the reason, yes. You’re in top form. Great practice, today.”

Javier smiled. He knew he had skated pretty well and he felt fine, but hearing it from Brian was something else, something more. “Thank you.”

“This season you can make it. You really can, Javi. You can make it at the Grand Prix and you can make it at Worlds.”

“Me? A little skater from the sunny shores of Spain?” He meant his tone to be ironic, but his voice was actually trembling.

Brian wasn’t grinning anymore. “Oh yes. Go on like this, and season 2014-2015 will be yours to grasp.”

Javier lowered his head, tucked his hands in his jean pockets. “Well, let’s wait for the first Grand Prix event,” he muttered, “then we will see.”

He felt Brian’s gaze on him. Warm, proud, and Javier thought – knew – that it was worth spending four more years so far from home, in a cold country, if it meant skating at his best thanks to this coach.

“Then we will see,” Brian echoed him, grinning again and squeezing his arm, quickly and affectionately. “Have a nice evening, Javi.”

“You too, Brian. You know that pineapple juice _can’t_ help you getting thinner, don’t you.”

Followed by Brian laughter, Javier walked out of the club. He checked his watch: too late to catch the bus at 6,35. No problem, he could still catch the one at 6,43, and still relax on his cozy sofa… oh, who was he trying to fool? Relaxing wasn’t the point; the point was that he didn’t feel like hanging out with Cortney. He still liked seeing her, and having sex with her; since months, though, their relationship wasn’t working anymore, and he was sadly tired of all their embarrassing silences, of their little misunderstandings, of the polite, formal tones they used to fix an unfortunate statement.

He had reached the bus stop. Amongst some unknown faces, there were some reassuring known faces as well: Mrs. Hasty, a woman in her forties who kept on checking her watch and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, as if she was always, unforgivably late; Hoodie, a skinny boy whose face Javier had never seen (his mouth excepted), buried as it was in the depths of his sweat-shirt’s hoodie; and Maria Callas, a beautiful, fat young woman who wore a scarf even in summer, as if to protect a precious soprano’s uvula. Who knew where the bus 165 would take them. Mrs. Hasty maybe had to go and pick her children up somewhere, and in the meanwhile she was thinking that she still needed to do her daily grocery shopping, to cook for dinner – that’s why she looked so nervous; or maybe her lover was waiting for her in a hotel room: she’d told her husband she had to do some overtime at her office, instead she was going to sleep with another man. What about Maria Callas? Javier thought she was going to some theater for some opera’s rehearsals, but it was quite likely that she was not a soprano, only a young woman suffering from bronchitis who needed to pay lot of attention to her throat, and she was now going home after working all day as a clerk in some shop…

The bus was now approaching, half empty as it always was at 6,43. (At 6,35 it was always crowded: eight minutes and everything mysteriously changed). As usual, Javier sat close to the exit door, and his travelling companions chose their favorite places as well: Mrs. Hasty in front of him, Maria Callas right behind the driver, while Hoodie stood near the exit, his long legs apart to better keep his balance.

Hoodie. Javier wasn’t able to imagine how he lived. Might the reason be that he never really saw his face? It might, yes. He had imagined a teenager messing around with his friends the whole afternoon, a young clerk in a record shop, a pupil in an acting school, a dog-sitter, a delivery boy. No way: none of those roles convinced him. Okay, probably Javier was wrong also about Mrs. Hasty and Maria Callas, but he felt like Hoodie was intentionally eluding his reasoning and fantasy, challenging him to comprehend the incomprehensible.

He looked at Hoodie’s hand, the one grabbing the bus metal support. He looked quite often at Hoodie’s hands. They were thin, with long fingers, but too small to belong to a pianist. They were elegant, too, but their nails were roughly cut, not shaped, even dirty sometimes. Were they the hands of a mechanic? No, too graceful. Of a student? No, too calloused – the only callus missing was exactly the one that students and writers had on their middle finger… Those hands were a riddle, just like Hoodie.

Hoodie turned slightly to him, and Javier looked hastily away. Great, now he was spending his time staring at unknown people on the bus. Better if he focused on Cortney, on their issues, on how to face the nth night when –

“Ticket, please.”

Absorbed as he was by his reveries, Javier hadn’t realized that on the bus there were now two inspectors. He smiled to the one who had just talked to him and took his pass out of his jacket pocket; while his pass was scrutinized, with the corner of his eyes he saw the second inspector thanking Mrs. Hasty, who put her pass back in her purse, and approaching Hoodie.

“Ticket, please.”

“Sure,” a soft young voice said, with a slight foreign accent that Javier couldn’t quite recognize. Always with the corner of his eye, Javier watched Hoodie rummage in the sack he always carried with him, in his jean pockets – but then the bus stopped, the doors opened and Hoodie rushed out.

“Hey!” The inspector got out of the bus as well, tried to chase the boy, but Hoodie had disappeared already, fast like the wind, like he’d never been there. The inspector turned to his colleague, opened his arms and shook his head, then got back on board. The doors hissed closed and the bus sped up; the two inspectors went back to their job.

Javier picked his sport bag and stood up; there were still two stops, but he was tired of sitting down; he was physically exhausted, but what had just happened had put in his body some sort of excitement. Usually, Hoodie remained on the bus when Javier got out of it; what was that boy going to do now, after running away so far from his destination? Maybe he would have walked (to where?), his long restless legs taking him from sidewalk to sidewalk; maybe he would have called a friend or a relative and ask them to pick him up: maybe, after a while he would have gone back to the stop and waited patiently for the next bus, his unfathomable face hidden by the hoodie, his beautiful dirty hands tucked in his sweat-shirt’s pockets. And tomorrow? Tomorrow, was he going to be at the Cricket Club bus stop again?

“Are you getting out?”

Maria Callas, who was always getting out at the stop before Javier’s, was looking at him with a polite, shallow smile on her lips.

“I’m not, sorry.”

Javier took a step aside and watched her get out, start walking to the theater, or to her place, or whatever destination she was going to. Tomorrow I will talk to Hoodie, Javier decided, I’m too curious; somehow comforted and perked up by his decision, he waited for his stop and got out of the bus.

The next day, though, Hoodie wasn’t there.

*****

Every time Cortney swallowed a sip of coffee, she made noise. Too much noise, for Javier. For a long period he hadn’t even realized it, but since a while he did: it was like her throat was clogged up, like it was a bottleneck and any liquid found it hard to flow through it.

“Honey, could you please make less noise when you swallow, _please_?” Javier snapped at last. The noise she made wasn’t annoying anymore: by now, it was unbearable.

Cortney froze up, with her cup of coffee midair and a puzzled look on her face. “Excuse-me?” she hesitated.

Javier waved vaguely his hand in the air. “When you swallow, you sound like… like a grand piano falling down from the fifth floor and crashing on the pavement.”

For a few seconds Cortney neither moved nor talked, just stared at Javier in disbelief. Then she pressed her lips together, stood up and went to the counter, where, with a sharp move of her wrist, she threw what remained of her coffee down the sink.

“Better now?” she said with a bitter, sarcastic tone, and she walked out of the kitchen.

Javier didn’t follow her. He looked at the table in front of him: an Italian moka pot he had given her for Christmas (aware that it was actually a gift to himself); the bacon in her plate, uneaten and somehow disgusting (how can you possibly feel like eating something so fat and _fried_ , Gosh, right after waking up? Javier always tried not to kiss her, after breakfast); the sugar bowl she kept close to her cup, since the day they’d started frequently – jokingly? – bickering about how the perfect coffee should be… only one look at that table, and it was plain for all to see that they didn’t get along; they couldn’t.

Javier drank the last sip of his coffee, stood up and went to find Cortney: she was in the bedroom and she was furiously packing her sport bag.

“You didn’t finish your breakfast,” Javier said after a silence. It was not what he should have said, he knew it, but in that moment he couldn’t think about anything better.

“If I sound like a grand piano when I’m drinking some coffee, imagine when I’m eating.” She wasn’t looking at him. “It would be awful if I hurt such a delicate auditory system.”

Javier leaned against the door jamb, arms crossed on his chest. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t know what got into me. It’s just…” Just what?

Finally, Cortney stopped packing and looked at him. “It’s just that you can’t date someone only because you don’t want to be alone,” she said for him. Then started packing again.

“That’s why we date?” Javier asked her. He was feeling a strong, but tolerable weight on his heart. “Because we don’t want to be alone?”

“Well, that’s why _you_ date me,” she answered, without hesitating or stopping doing what she was doing. Javier had no time to reply, though: she put a t-shirt in her bag, took a deep breath, put her hands on her hips and looked at him again. “Do you think it has been easy, for me? Accepting this… this minor role in your life?”

“What makes you think that your role in my life is…”

“Why did you choose to remain in Toronto, Javi?” Cortney interrupted him, her eyes burning. “Because you love me? No, of course not. You’re still here because you couldn’t be on that damn podium in Sochi.”

Javier uncrossed his arms and lamely shook his head. “Cortney, I’m an athlete. A skater, a _good_ skater. And I’m Spanish. My parents made so many sacrifices for me to train here, they’re _still_ making a lot of sacrifices. Of course I wanted to be on that damn podium. Of course I would have come back to Spain and allowed my parents not to do so much for me anymore, if I’d been on that fucking podium.”

Cortney took another deep breath, then disappeared into the bathroom. Javier had to wait for her to come back, before she spoke again. “I can understand, Javi,” she said. “I’m an athlete too. The Olympic podium? It will never be within reach for me, so yes, I can perfectly understand. But it hurt anyway, when I realized that… that I don’t count at all, when it comes to your most important decisions and plans.”

“That’s not true,” Javier said quickly, automatically. “Cortney, that’s…” He shut up. Cortney was packing not only her sport bag, but all the things she usually kept in his flat: toothbrush, face cream, nightgown. She was leaving. She was leaving him. Or maybe it was him who was leaving her, since he’d come back from Sochi? “I’m sorry,” he whispered, finding finally some strength to straighten up and reach his girlfriend. _Former_ girlfriend, as it seemed. “Cortney, I’m so sorry,” he said again opening his arms, and she accepted his silent invitation and put her arms around his neck, her chin on his shoulder.

They stood like that for a long time, without talking. Javier felt Cortney’s body against his, and it was nice, it had always felt nice, but not quite right, not unavoidable like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle slotting together; he breathed her smell, good and exciting too – but she’d never smelled like home; and his mind went to their last, mechanical sexual encounters, to their inability to understand each other with one look in their eyes, to their skating too: the thing they should have shared the most, but they never really did. Cortney was right, you can’t date someone only because you don’t want to be alone: admitting it was fair and very, very sad.

“I’m sorry,” he said once again.

Cortney broke their hug with a sad smile on her lips. “I’m sorry too,” she said, then she went back to packing. When she was ready, she threw her bag on her shoulder and left the room in silence. Javier followed her to the front door.

“Don’t disappear, though,” he said. “I mean, I’m here anyway, and…”

“Javi, _you_ will disappear,” she interrupted him.

He lowered his eyes. “Why do you say that? I care about you, Cortney.”

“I say so because we’re not friends, you’re not one of those boys who can be friends with the girls they dated. That’s what you told me once, didn’t you?” she took his hand between hers; Javier raised his eyes and saw again that sad, tired smile on her lips. “Who knows, maybe when you’ll date someone who will be _also_ your best friend, it will mean that you are really, definitely in love. Good luck, Javi.”

Cortney opened the door, stepped out of the apartment, closed the door behind her. Javier kept looking at it for a while, not knowing what he was feeling. The only thing he knew was that neither him nor Cortney had cried a single tear.

*****

Javier loved to practice at night. He did it pretty rarely: at the Cricket Club there weren’t classes after eight pm; asking to skate in the evening meant asking an employer to stay there until late to resurface the ice; it meant asking for a privilege, and Javier didn’t like it: so he adapted willingly to the schedule set up by Brian, and just once in a long while he indulged his wish to skate in the evening. Like _that_ evening, for instance.

It had been five days since he broke up with Cortney; they had exchanged a few messages, so calm and polite that Javier found hard to believe that they had been a pair for almost two years: day by day you spend so many hours together, you have sex, you wake up in the same bed, both with bleary eyes and bad breath, then whatremains? Some pleasantries, and a regret so light that you become aware of it only at night, in that brief hypnotic time between wakefulness and sleep.

So he had asked Brian whether he could practice after eight, that evening. He needed some more training, after all: Skate Canada was in two weeks and he wanted to win there, he wanted to show he had deserved the bronze medal at the last World Championships and that he deserved the silver medal – or the gold, why not – at the next ones. Brian had agreed.

He had turned only some lamps on, and the ice was a painting of black and white patterns, of lights and shadows. He hadn’t turned the music on, though, and skating in that immaculate silence, barely bothered by the sound of his blades, was one of the most spiritual experiences Javier had ever had.

He rehearsed both of his programs for hours, and did so many spins and jumps that he felt not only tired, but feverish; nevertheless he kept skating, at the end just stroking in slow circles like a starter in a public rink – but then he caught sight of the guy who had to resurface the ice and was sleeping on a bench beside the rink. What time… Javier checked his watch: ten past midnight? Oh shit, shit!

He rushed out of the rink, woke the guy up, apologized as much as he could, then he took off his skates quickly, put on his sneakers and jacket, and ran out of the Cricket Club, his exhausted legs wobbling to the bus stop.

Twenty-one past midnight. Were there still buses? Yes, if his memory wasn’t wrong, but he had to check the timetable. Where was it? Alright, there. His eyes were burning, too many hours with contact lenses on. So: night schedule, night schedule...

The voice hit his ear in the same moment something hard and sharp hit his back, right under his jacket.

“Give me your bag.” The voice was young, but threatening. “And your watch.”

Javier felt an icy shiver radiate throughout his body from where the stranger was keeping his knife, or whatever it was. So, this was what fear felt like, right? Slowly, with wide, perfectly visible moves, Javier took off and lifted his watch, keeping it in front of him between two fingers. A skeletal hand with peeling skin grabbed it.

“Now, put down your bag.”

No. Not his bag. His skates were inside it, and his skates were Javier’s most precious belongings. He had no time to get used to a new pair before the Grand Prix.

“Look,” he tried, “I give you my wallet and my phone, but don’t take my bag, ple…”

“I said: put. It. Down.” The voice was not only young and threatening, but slurring and somehow drowsy. Was the stranger a junky? Very likely. Javier would rather bargain with a professional thief: more lucid, less frantic. He could feel his heartbeat, loud but slow.

“Please,” he said. “In my bag there’s just useless stuff for you, some sweaty training clot…”

“PUT IT DOOOOOOWN!” The stranger’s scream exploded close to Javier’s ear, high-pitched and carrying some spit with it, while the knife punched a hole in Javier’s shirt and touched his skin.

“Okay.” Javier put down his bag. “Here it is.”

“SHUT UP, OKAY? SHUT THE FU…”

“Skinny, it’s you the only one who’s screaming.”

Another voice, equally young but with an accent – an Eastern accent? A very calm voice, much more threatening than the first one. Javier felt the knife recoil from his skin.

“So what, Blade? You finally want to know what stealing feels like, uh?” the one who’d been called Skinny said. In his voice there was a light, distant tremor of insecurity.

“I just want _you_ to know what _avoiding_ stealing feels like, Skinny.”

How Javier wished to spin around and look in the face of these two strangers who had his fate in their hands, but he didn’t dare, not yet.

“Blade…”

“Go away. You don’t want me to show you why they call me like that, do you.”

Silence, for a moment.

Then, a frantic sound of footsteps, thwacks, gasps, the clinking of some metal on the pavement, muffled voices, and a kind of commotion in the air. Javier gritted his teeth and spun around. He saw a blonde, gangly guy leaning to pick up a screwdriver (the “knife” Javier had felt against his skin?) and stumbling away while muttering something like _Robin fucking Hood_ ; then Javier looked away from the guy and met the eyes of the boy who had just saved his bag.

Slanted eyes, dark but so bright. A diaphanous skin. Full lips of a vivid fuchsia, and long, more than black hair.

It all lasted for a second; then the boy ran away, towards the park at the end of Wilson Avenue, and Javier wasn’t able to say anything, to ask him to wait or thank him. Astounded, he just stared at the silhouette of _Blade_ until it disappeared into the woods.

He had just met Hoody again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuzuru was mad at Javier Fernández for what he had done to him, but most of all he was grateful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, here's a new chapter and be aware there are references to prostitution; so, if you don't like the idea, just skip the first part.

Yuzuru washed away the last scum of shampoo, but he remained under the shower. It was so nice to feel a constant, strong stream of warm water on his skin, to use a shower gel and a shampoo that didn’t smell cheap, to take all the time he wanted. To wash himself without shivering with cold, unlike in the park’s fountain. To wash himself carefully and calmly, knowing that nobody was peeking at him, unlike at the public washrooms. It was so nice and so comforting, too. When your skin was clean, your nails smoothly shaped, your hair not oily and your head not itchy, everything seemed possible: even getting over the past, even hoping for the future. Even pretending that the present didn’t exist.

It did exist, though.

And he had many things to do.

Unwillingly, Yuzuru closed the faucet and got out of the shower box. He lingered there for a while, drying himself with a soft white terry towel, then he scrubbed his hair until it was almost dried, and washed his teeth with Jeremy’s toothbrush. He would have rather used his own, but after all that Jeremy’s mouth had done to him last night, there was no point in being picky. He took out of his sack the only change of underwear he owned and put it on. Okay: time to go back to the bedroom and say good-bye.

Jeremy was still in bed, seraphically naked, and he was reading or watching something on his phone. When he heard Yuzuru, he raised his eyes and smiled.

“Are you going already?” he said. “What a pity.”

Yuzuru picked up his jeans from the chair where he had thrown them hours ago and started putting them on. “Yeah,” he said, “I need to.”

Jeremy put his phone down on the nightstand. “Why don’t you stay for breakfast? This hotel serves wonderful breakfasts. We could order some good room service.”

Yuzuru thought about it while he was getting dressed. He was hungry, and there was no doubt that Jeremy was offering a fantastic breakfast; maybe Yuzuru could also take advantage of the hotel’s laundry service, so that he would wear clean clothes for a couple of days. He needed to get his problems with Skinny solved and to retrieve his stuff at the park, though, much more than he needed to eat.

“Thank you, but I can’t,” he said.

“Whatever.” Jeremy’s voice sounded somehow sad, and when Yuzuru was ready and looked at him, he realized that Jeremy’s eyes were sad as well. Yuzuru chose to smile at him.

“Thank you so much, really,” he said. “It’s just that I have something important to do.”

Jeremy nodded and stood up; as if he was feeling suddenly shy, he wrapped the bedsheet around him, then reached for his wallet in the inside pocket of his jacket and went to Yuzuru. “What we agreed for the whole night,” he said, counting some bills, “plus an extra, okay? You deserved it.” He handed Yuzuru the money, his eyes full of wistful longing.

Yuzuru took the money, smiling again. “You’re generous, thank you.”

“I’m not, it’s you who…” Jeremy shut up, reached for his own nape and scratched it. “Look, I’ll be in Toronto for two weeks,” he said after a moment, “and I’d like to… I’d love to see you again. More than once, even. What do you think?”

What do I think?, Yuzuru wondered. Well, it would be comfortable. It would open a new, painful wound inside him, like every time he had to sell himself. And it wouldn’t be the first time that he spent more than one night with a client, although he didn’t make it happen too often: if you spend too much time with a client, it can be hard to keep the right distance and to put a neat, not painful end to your agreement with them. But yes, it would have been comfortable, and Yuzuru’s life was _very_ uncomfortable: how could he find the strength to shut completely the door that Jeremy was trying to keep open for him?

“I will think about it,” he finally said, “okay?”

Jeremy looked disappointed, but he nodded anyway. “Okay,” he said, then reached for Yuzuru and stroked his cheek, his jaw, a corner of his mouth. Yuzuru forced himself to let Jeremy touch him.

“See you, babe.”

See you, Jeremy?

Outside it was cold. Fucking Canada, it was October and it felt like a damn freezing January. He needed a quilted jacket or something like that. And he needed a new place to sleep, warmer than the locker room of an abandoned swimming pool. Well, one problem at a time.

First of all, eating and shopping.

Yuzuru bought a take-away cup of tea and a pastry, then he went to a pharmacy to get a new inhaler. Finally, he filled a washing machine at his usual automatic laundromat and headed for the park. Now he had to find Skinny and make things right with him. It was always better to have as few enemies as possible. That was the real reason why he had accepted to spend the night with that Englishman, Jeremy: more than money, he needed to spend at least one night away from the abandoned swimming pool. Nobody was supposed to know where he slept – that was why he often changed places – but Skinny was a junky always hanging around those premises, and Yuzuru didn’t want to risk any retaliation.

Since he had some money, Yuzuru bought the ticket and took first the metro, then the bus to Wilson Avenue. It was early morning and the Cricket Club was still closed, but the receptionist would arrive soon, and the barman too, then a young woman looking to Yuzuru like a ballet teacher. Tracy Wilson would be there at 9.30; Brian Orser at 9.45, with or without Ghislain Briand. Then, between 10 and 10.20, all the skaters scheduled for the class at 10.30 would arrive: Nam Nguyen, Javier Raya... Javier Fernández would be the last one, looking too sleepy to try and pretend he was sorry for being late _again_.

Javier Fernández.

Yesterday night, Yuzuru was in the locker room of the abandoned swimming pool, eating pizza – the waitress at the pizzeria in Wilson Avenue had a very innocent but very weak point for him, and she gave him some slice of pizza whenever she could – and wondering if he should go downtown and try to panhandle some money, when a ray of light had suddenly seeped through the broken windows of the locker room. Yuzuru had peeped out: the light was coming from the Cricket Club’s ice rink. He had finished his pizza, taken his sack and reached the place from where he could spy inside the club: one of the two major walls of the rink was very close to the park’s fence, five or six feet perhaps, and in front of one of its huge windows there was a big maple tree. Ten minutes, and Yuzuru had piled against the maple trunk many big stones that could act as a kind of stairway to the first branch; from there, climbing from one branch to another, Yuzuru could get high enough to look inside the club. He didn’t see anything but a portion of the rink, but he could catch a glimpse of a spin, a jump: enough to make his day.

Yesterday night he had climbed on “his” usual branch and, after looking for a few moments at an empty rink, he had seen Javier Fernández; it hadn’t taken a long time for Yuzuru to understand that Javier was alone and he was practicing his programs for the season 2014-2015, _Black Betty_ and _Il barbiere di Siviglia_. Yuzuru had watched both at Japan Open (he had been able to watch at least the men’s competition in an Internet Café) and he liked _Black Betty_ the most: it went with the playful, flirty and a bit sardonic aura of Fernández’s skating and (Yuzuru suspected) personality.

Yuzuru had watched him for all of the three hours that the Spaniard had spent on the ice, and it had been the best moment of the last three and a half years. In the immaculate silence of the night, Yuzuru could hear the music too, even if soft like the waves of a calm sea; and he could see a strip of lights and shadows making the ice look like a chessboard; and Javier was turning, sliding, spinning, jumping and stroking, oblivious to the boy who was spying on him, totally focused on the most important thing in his life – and in Yuzuru’s life, despite everything: skating. Then Javier had stopped practicing his programs but he had kept skating, only and simply skating, often with his eyes shut, as if he wanted to feel the ice and nothing else, nothing more… in that moment of absolute, complete happiness, Yuzuru had felt it was worth it. All the stress, all the doubts, all the pain and all the obstacles he had met during his three and a half year long travel from Sendai, Japan, to Toronto, Canada: yes, it was worth it; and yes, the Cricket Club was his only possible destination, although he couldn’t practice there as a skater. Although watching other skaters from a maple tree branch could be so very painful, sometimes. Only there, outside the Cricket Club, there was some joy left for him, and some daydreaming.

Finally Javier had left the club, Skinny had chosen him as his next victim, and now Yuzuru had a problem.

After checking if all his stuff was still there (it was, and he put everything in the usual hideaway: a furnace cabinet where there was no furnace anymore), he had to search the area for nearly two hours, before finding Skinny: he was just outside a mall, trying to sell stolen pens that he pretended were handmade by him and his mates at a non-existent rehab for junkies.

“Sir, do you have something against toxi… oh,” Skinny stopped talking as soon as he recognized Yuzuru. “What the fuck do you want, Blade?” Underneath his bravado, he sounded somehow anxious, if not scared.

“To refund you,” Yuzuru said.

“Uh?”

“Yesterday you couldn’t steal what you wanted because of me, right? Well, here’s your compensation.” Yuzuru put some of Jeremy’s bills in Skinny’s hand.

Perplexed, Skinny stared at him for a few seconds, then lowered his eyes on the money in his palm and seemed to come back to his senses. He counted the bills. “Such a poor compensation,” he said finally. “If you ask me…”

“I’m not asking you,” Yuzuru interrupted him. “Let’s say, that’s the money you would have probably found in the guy’s wallet. And you stole his watch anyway.”

“Fuck that watch. I took it to the loan shop and it granted me only some damn peanuts.”

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

Skinny looked at the bills in his hand for some more seconds, then he seemed to make up his mind and put the money in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Well, Blade, let’s say we’re okay,” he stated. Then he chuckled. “You’re a fucking weirdo, mate, did you know it?”

So much a weirdo that Yuzuru would have liked to redeem that watch at the loan shop and give it back to Javier Fernández. But it would cost him too much, he couldn’t afford it.

“I’m no more a weirdo than someone selling Bic pens pretending they’re handmade,” Yuzuru said. “See you, Skinny,” and he walked away.

Yuzuru peeped at the watch of an old man walking beside him. 10.30 am. Even if he hurried up, he would be too late to see coaches and skaters getting into the Cricket Club. Shit. And he couldn’t follow Javier on the bus that evening: he could be found out. Well, maybe it was for the best: watching some practice at the club was one thing, but tailing a skater… Javier Fernández wasn’t simply _a skater_ , though: he was one of the best skaters in the world, he had a fabulous quad Salchow and he was one of the main reasons why Yuzuru, in another life, had dreamt of moving to Canada and training there… by the way, would it be so bad if Javier recognized him? If they talked? It would have been great, to chat with him and… no. Otherwise Javier could ask questions, and Yuzuru didn’t want to lie – but he couldn’t tell the truth as well. No, it was better not to try and change anything: words could lead to closeness, closeness to a feeling of safeness, and when you feel safe you tend to lower your defenses. And he couldn’t lower his defenses, not for Javier Fernández nor for anybody else.

Yuzuru walked to the park. He could climb on his maple tree and enjoy the first practice. Jeremy’s money would be enough for a few days, he could relax a bit and not worry about anything – well, he still had to retrieve his laundry – so…

He stopped on his feet. On the low wall near the bus stop, there was a paper bag with thick, black capital letters written on it: TO BLADE. What, how…? Yuzuru went to the bus stop, took a look around. There was no one, just a purple-haired old woman sitting under the bus shelter. Yuzuru took the paper bag, sat on the wall and opened it. Inside, there was a paper cup (tea), another small bag with a ham and cheese sandwich, and a note. Yuzuru read it.

_If nobody stole this bag or tore this note before you found it… I want to thank you for saving my sport bag yesterday. There was no money inside it, but something much more precious to me. I hope I’m not offending you, am I?, buying you this breakfast. I bought you a cup of green tea, not coffee, because I guess you’re Japanese and Japanese people love green tea, am I right? Okay, when you’ll drink it (if the bag is still where I put it, if you come here and see it, if if if) it will taste cold and awful anyway… but hey, I tried my best. Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart. Javi._

Yuzuru needed to read Javier’s note three times, before taking it in and making some sense out of it. Then he brought the cup to his mouth and drank a sip of tea. Cold, and awful. He bit into the sandwich. Read the note for the fourth time. Smiled.

He definitely, definitely needed one of Skinny’s _handmade_ pens.

*****

That’s how it started.

Yuzuru bought a pen (Skinny, such an asshole, made him pay) and wrote his answer on the same paper sheet of Javier’s note: _The tea was cold, yes, but green, so you guessed very right! Thank you, Blade_. When it was almost time for Javier to get out of the club and walk to the bus stop, Yuzuru bent the paper sheet in two, wrote a big To Javi on it, laid it on the low wall, putting a stone on it to keep it there, and ran to hide. Five minutes later Javier walked to the bus stop: Yuzuru saw him noticing the note, picking it up, reading it, and smiling.

The morning after, when Javier got down of the bus at 10.25, he left a new paper bag on the wall: _Today, chai tea! Did I get it right? And I bought you another ham and cheese sandwich, but I have a terrible, terrible doubt: maybe you are a vegetarian? A vegan? You can tell me, okay? Javi_.

_I’m neither a vegetarian nor a vegan, and chai is my favorite tea. Thank you! Blade_.

That’s how it started, and went on for some days.

Javier would get out of the bus (always late, obviously) and Yuzuru would watch him put the usual paper bag on the wall; as soon as Javier disappeared behind the Cricket Club’s door, Yuzuru would retrieve the bag, his mouth watering for the exquisite things he was going to savor and his heart beating fast for the note he knew he was going to find.

_Oh God! Oh God oh God oh God! I just bought a quiche and I realized that maybe at breakfast you prefer something SWEET!_

_Okay, caught. I ADORE sweets. The quiche was fantastic though, thank you!_

The day after, in the bag Yuzuru found two…

_Croissants à la crème! Am I right? Are they your favorite sweet??_

_Soooo good, thank you! But croissants aren’t my favorite sweet, no_ _J_

Yuzuru ate the croissants, then went to find a job and helped two workers of a moving company. The day after he ate a huge slice of apple strudel and panhandled outside a church. Then he ate strawberry pie and handed out so many flyers in so many streets that he got blisters under his feet.

_Strawberry pie? Warm! It is NEARLY my favorite sweet._

_A-ha! You like fruits! Okay, time for the heavy artillery: strawberry shortcake, kneaded and baked in front of me. Hot?_

Yuzuru took the shortcake out of the bag and looked at it with a lump in his throat. The last time he had a strawberry shortcake, he was still in Sendai; his mother had come to pick him up at the rink, where Nanami-sensei had told her that he’d landed a perfect triple Axel-triple Toe loop combination; so the three of them all went celebrate to his favorite pastry shop and ate his favorite sweet. Now Yuzuru closed his eyes and bit into Javier’s shortcake: the succulence of strawberries, the impalpability of the whipped cream, the softness of the sponge cake – and he suddenly found himself drowned in memories, or maybe sensations, or both. His dad teaching him how to bake cakes – he was so good at it; Yuzuru’s mom was a fantastic chef, but _not_ when sugar was involved. His sister taking him to their favorite pastry shop after he’d been bullied by a schoolmate, buying a big bowl of whipped cream and then taking Yuzuru to that schoolmate’s place, where they had thrown together the cream in the boy’s face. His mom dunking her finger in a cup of sake, wetting slightly his forehead with it and saying it brought good luck. Memories and sensations of what he didn’t have anymore – home; and Yuzuru knew that he was crying. He knew that he was crying and that he couldn’t take it anymore, that he couldn’t carry on his shoulders all that loneliness and all that sorrow anymore. He had eaten nearly all the shortcake, even if eating and sobbing at once was quite complicated, and Yuzuru was mad at Javier Fernández for what he had done to him, but most of all he was grateful. So, when he stopped eating and sobbing, he didn’t leave any message on the wall and headed to Avenue Road. He needed to find Skinny again, to ask him for some information; then, he needed money – which meant, he needed Jeremy.

Maybe, he thought with his heart full of tears and fury and regret, being hugged by someone who showed him not only desire but also some kind of respect, if not affection, this time would make him less sick than it usually did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thank you for reading :))


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blade was looking at him, and there was something in his eyes. A stormy stream of emotions and thoughts that Javier could not read, but that took his breath away: there was a whole story in Blade’s eyes, and for a second Javier felt it would have been better not to try and read it. After a second, though, Blade smiled, said: “Why not,” and Javier had to smile too.

When Javier had seen Blade bursting into tears with the shortcake in his hands, he’d felt like rushing outside the Cricket Club and asking him how he could help him, how he could _understand_ him. Then he had known better: Brian and Tracy would be mad at him and scold him forever for delaying (further) his morning practice; then, he had no right to go to that boy, offer him some comfort and ask him for explanations. So he had stopped spying on Blade, got away from the glass doors of the Cricket Club and gone to the locker room, since he was later than ever; and when he’d stepped out of the club at noon, nervous and longing for a new message from Blade, he had found out that Blade had left him no message at all. Javier had looked for it like a fool all around the bus station, but in the end he had surrendered to the simple truth: Blade’s note hadn’t fallen down, it hadn’t flown away and nobody had thrown it in a garbage can. There was no note for him to be found, and that was it. Javier felt so disappointed. Why? He didn’t understand. He just knew that his damned shortcake had made Blade cry: did it wake up unpleasant memories? Maybe. In this case, strawberry shortcake was very likely one of Blade’s favorite sweets. Was Javier supposed to buy a new one tomorrow? And to write what, in his new message? Perhaps he should face Blade, finally – and tell him what? _Hey, I was very disappointed when I didn’t find any note from you_. Gosh, no. _Look, I saw you crying yesterday, so, if you want to talk, here I am_ …even worse. Maybe he should buy no sweet and leave no message; maybe Blade’s non-answer had been a way to tell him he was tired of their bizarre communication. So what?

“So, can you tell me why you got so obsessed about that guy?” his friend Steve asked him that night at the pub, after Javier had told him the whole story.

“Well, he’s… intriguing,” Javier said. Actually, he himself didn’t really understand why he thought so much about that boy – and he had been thinking about since his meetings with _Hoodie_ on the bus, Javier realized. “Don’t you find him intriguing?”

“Javi, if there’s something I _don’t_ find intriguing, it’s any other existing male on this Earth.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not what I mean, when I say _intriguing_. And anyway, I barely saw his face, which…”

“A-ha! See? You _do_ mean _that_ , when you say _intriguing_!”

“Steeeeve… maybe you didn’t notice before, but I’m heterosexual.”

“So what? Can’t you like a man, for once in your life? I always liked girls younger than me, then I fell in love with a woman twelve years older than me and she…”

“Oh, come on! Eve is so special, no matter how old she is.”

“And maybe this boy is so special, no matter what gender he is.”

“You silly,” Javier said, but only after a few seconds.

They drank their beers without speaking for a few moments, watching without really seeing the TV set on the far wall. It showed an Eminem video clip, but the music aired in the pub was an old song of Alanis Morrisette.

“I don’t know,” Steve sighed finally. “I would probably try to face him. To talk to him.”

“Not that easy,” Javier sighed in his turn. “That boy’s sneaky as an eel.”

“Then I don’t know what to suggest to you.”

“Hey, friends are supposed to help when you need them!”

“Nooooope.” Steve smiled and pat Javier on his shoulder. “Friends are supposed to be sillier than you, so you can feel a bit more intelligent and therefore better.”

Javier put an arm around Steve’s neck. “Wow, so you’re my best friend ever!” he joked, pretending to choke him.

“Anytime, mate,” Steven exhaled, grinning, “anytime.”

Anyway, a small idea about what to do had just been born in Javier’s mind.

*****

_You know? I think I got it right: strawberry shortcake is your favorite sweet. But I also think it’s better to buy you some simple apple pie, today. Cold, warm, hot? Javi._

When at 6.30 pm Javier left the Cricket Club, Blade was waiting for him at the bus stop.

As soon as they were face to face, Blade gave Javier a shy smile. “Hot,” he said.

_Cold, warm, hot?_

Javier smiled too. “Ah, I knew it! Well, I’m so happy about it.”

Blade put a hand in his jacket’s pocket, took out something and handed it to Javier.

“This is yours, isn’t it?” he said.

On Blade’s palm, there was a watch. Javier gasped.

“It’s mine, yes,” he said. “How did you…”

“I did.” Blade shrugged. “Take it.”

Javier slowly took his watch from Blade’s palm and laced it around his wrist.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s not very valuable, but my parents gave it to me when I turned eighteen and… thank you. So much.”

Blade shrugged again. “Thank you for all those breakfasts, and… well…” He lowered his eyes. “Bye, then.” He turned around and started walking away.

“Hey, wait!” Javier put instinctively a hand on Blade’s arm. Blade stopped and turned toward him. Javier let go of his arm and tried a smile. “I mean, you… you leave me no message and then go away like this? You can’t, can you?” He chuckled, uncertain.

Blade was looking at him. Calm. Silent. Javier chuckled again.

“Would you like something to drink?” he said. Blade kept looking at him. “There’s a cozy café not far from here. You know it? In Avenue Road. I’d love to buy you a tea. Or a coffee. Or whatever you want.”

Blade was looking at him, and there was something in his eyes. A stormy stream of emotions and thoughts that Javier could not read, but that took his breath away: there was a whole story in Blade’s eyes, and for a second Javier felt it would have been better not to try and read it. After a second, though, Blade smiled, said: “Why not,” and Javier had to smile too.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

The café was actually cozy and not too crowded, so they could sit at a table in a quiet corner of the room. Javier ordered a cappuccino and Blade a green tea, and they got their orders in fine, pretty mugs, along with a plate of cookies.

Now what?

“So,” Javier sighed, “you are Japanese, aren’t you?”

“Yes, from Sendai,” Blade said after a moment. A shadow had darkened his eyes; Javier didn’t know why, but he chose not to insist on it.

“I go to Japan quite often,” he said, “but I’ve never been in your town.”

Blade didn’t ask him why he went to Japan quite often, and Javier took a sip of his cappuccino, feeling a little bit awkward.

“I’m Spanish, by the way,” he decided to say. “Well, it’s probably quite obvious, isn’t it? Because of my acc...”

“I know you are Spanish,” Blade interrupted him. “You come from Madrid, your name is Javier Fernández and you’re a figure skater.”

Javier put down his mug with a thud; the saucer clinked vigorously.

“You know me?” he asked.

Blade nodded. He was smiling. “I love figure skating,” he explained. “When I can, I watch some competitions.”

_When I can_. Where did Blade live? Did he have an apartment, a TV set? With him, the most normal questions stopped being… well, normal.

“Really?” Javier hesitated. “Do you really love figure skating?”

“Why not?” Blade was still smiling, but so coldly that Javier felt a shiver along his spine. “A homeless person can’t love figure skating?”

So, at least one question had its answer, now. That boy – he must be eighteen, nineteen – was homeless. How sad and unfair. And strange: that answer had risen a dozen more questions.

“I’m just surprised. Like every time a stranger knows who I am,” Javier said. “Figure skating is not such a popular sport, not even here in Canada.”

Blade turned serious and lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, and took a sip of his tea.

Javier looked at Blade’s beautiful hands (they were clean, that day, nails short and shaped) and decided to erase the last part of their conversation from his and Blade’s mental horizon.

“That’s why I’m so thankful,” he said. “Not only because you retrieved my watch, but because you saved my bag.” Blade raised his eyes and looked at him. “If that guy had stolen my bag, he wouldn’t have earned anything, and I would have lost the most precious thing I have: my skates. Before an important competition, by the way.”

“What competition, Skate Canada?” Blade twisted his mouth. “I don’t remember all the dates of this season’s events.”

“Skate Canada, from the 31st of October 31 to the 2nd of November. The first of my two Grand Prix events… you know what the Grand Prix is, yes?”

“Sure.”

“Well, this year I begin with Skate Canada. It will be a very hard competition, with many top skaters. If I had to get used to a new pair of skates… God, I’m afraid that Patrick Chan wouldn’t be my only problem.”

“You’re better than Patrick Chan.”

Javier could distinctively feel his jaw drop. “What?”

Blade put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, his face shining with passion.

“Chan’s skating is wonderful, but he can’t jump, and jumps are the future,” he said; he looked almost restless. “On the contrary, you can jump. Your quad Salchow is amazing. And about your skating… well, your lines are so long, and your spins are impeccable.”

Javier was speechless. Blade was a total stranger to him; he was neither a coach, nor a rival. And yet his words, or maybe the fervor they’d been pronounced with, had stabbed Javier’s heart and grown wings into his back. And now, with his heart beating wildly and floating a couple of inches from the ground, Javier was feeling happy, and proud.

“Thank you,” he said, even if those two words didn’t express, not even remotely, his new, exuberant, bizarre joy.

Blade shook his head and leaned back. “You don’t need to thank me for telling the truth,” he said. “The most important thing is that you keep skating like this, always improving.”

Javier was tempted to reach for Blade’s hand, but he didn’t do it. “I’ll try my best,” he promised. “And you? Have you ever thought about skating? Since you love it so much…” He couldn’t go on, his voice dying in his throat. You idiot, Javier told to himself, what the fuck are you talking about? This boy is homeless, where could he find the money to pay for a coach, a rink?

Blade had straightened up, and all fervor in him had faded away.

“I suffer from asthma,” he said. “No sport for me.”

Oh.

Homeless, asthmatic and maybe, since he lived not in Sendai but in Toronto, so lonely, and with some heavy burden on his shoulders. But he had saved Javier’s skates and retrieved Javier’s watch.

“I’m sorry,” Javier said, and now it was him to lean forward. “I’m sorry that you suffer from asthma and that I ask stupid inappropriate questions.”

Blade stared at him with an unreadable look for a few moments, a bang of black hair escaping from his half ponytail and hanging loose across his forehead. He was beautiful, with black but starry eyes, regular features, high cheekbones, immaculate skin and full mouth. Very beautiful, in an unusual, quite ambiguous and exotic way – and Javier was caught by a suspicion about what he could do for a living. But then Blade smiled, and Javier pushed that suspicion away.

“Don’t worry,” Blade said. “I know it must be hard, to talk with someone like me.”

“It’s just that I’m not sure about what I can ask you,” Javier said, choosing to be honest. “But please, when I ask the wrong question just tell me, okay?”

“Okay.” Blade took a sip of his tea, looking like he was deep in thoughts; when he put down his mug, he had a half, naughty smile on his lips. “Can I ask _you_ a question?” he said.

Javier was caught by surprise. Until that moment he had taken for granted that he was the one curious about Blade, and not vice versa. “Of course,” he said.

“You take part in many summer ice shows, right?” Blade asked.

“Right.”

“And also Evgeni Plushenko and Johnny Weir take part to those shows.”

“Yes.”

Blade was visibly, childishly thrilled, and Javier felt a rush of tenderness in his blood.

“With you, they are my idols,” Blade said. “Can you please tell me a little how they are? Nothing too personal, of course. Yes? Please?”

Javier had to smile. “Okay,” he said. “Of course, what I’m going to tell you will self-destruct in five seconds.”

Blade giggled, his beautiful face full of mirth. “Of course,” he said.

Javier drank a sip of cappuccino, started telling how Plushenko and Weir were. And everything became suddenly easy.

They talked about Blade’s idols and many other skaters, and about how Japan looked like in Javier’s eyes, about Canada – Blade had travelled from the west to the east coast –, about the fact that neither of them had a driver license, about swimming (Javier could swim, Blade couldn’t), about dancing to Kpop songs (Blade could dance, Javier couldn’t), about music – they liked very different genres, but they both adored (wasn’t it weird?) Elvis _and_ late Seventies punk… from one theme, one sentence, one laughter to another, they drank respectively two cappuccinos and two green teas, then they left the café and took a walk, and only when Javier realized the shops were all closed he remembered to check the time: 8.39 pm. Fucking hell. He was an elite athlete, he was going to take part in a crucial competition in a few days, he had to follow a strict diet and to sleep the right amount of hours…

“You have to go,” Blade said. A statement, not a question.

“Yeah,” Javier said. “It’s quite late for me. Skate Canada is in a few days, so…”

“I understand.”

They walked side by side toward Winston Avenue.

“I need to take number 165,” Javier said, “but I don’t have the slightest idea about its timetable. You?”

“Sorry, I don’t know it either.”

“No, what I meant is whether you’re going to take the bus with me or not.”

“No.”

“Oh. Not so long ago you took it to, didn’t you?”

Since they had turned in Wilson Avenue, Blade was looking in front of him; now, though, he turned to Javier.

“Did you notice me?” he asked, surprised.

Javier nodded. “I like to watch the people who are on the bus with me… I always try to figure out how their life is. I must confess, I also give them nicknames.”

Blade chuckled. His laughter was like a breeze of glee and sweetness. “That’s what I do, too,” he said.

“You do?? Well, then… did you notice that beautiful, fat girl…”

“…always with a scarf, even when it was warm? Sure. I called her Madame Butterfly, because I guessed she was a soprano.”

“So did I! Well, I call her Maria Callas, but yes, I guess she’s a soprano.”

“And that lady in her forties, thin, always looking like she was afraid to be late?”

“Oh, that’s Mrs. Hasty!”

“Nuuuuuu, I called her The White Rabbit.”

Javier burst into laughter. Meanwhile, they had made it to the bus stop.

“Did you give _me_ a nickname?” Blade asked.

Javier nodded again. “Hoodie. Not so original, I know. But I could never guess who you were and what you were doing in your life.”

As if to deserve his nickname, Blade put the hoodie of his sweatshirt on his head. “Well,” he sighed, “it may be not so easy to guess that a boy of my age is homeless.”

Javier felt a sudden weight on his chest. “Forgive me,” he said, “I didn’t want to…”

“No problem,” Blade interrupted him, putting a hand on Javier’s shoulder. “It _would_ be a problem if you got awkward every time my… status comes to light.”

Javier smiled. So Blade was implying that they would meet again? The idea of seeing and talking to him again, and Blade’s hand on his shoulder, were making his skin weirdly fizzy.

Blade took his hand away and went to check the 165 timetable. “There’s one bus coming at 8.48,” he announced.

Javier checked his watch. “In four minutes,” he said. “Do you take it too?”

“No.” Blade was staring at his feet. “I don’t… I don’t sleep anymore where I slept when I took the 165.”

“Oh.” Javier stared at his feet as well. “I can’t ask you where you sleep now, can I?”

“You can’t.” Blade’s look and voice were soft, though.

“Then, can I ask you if tomorrow you’d like to have a strawberry shortcake or not?”

Blade shook his head. “Too many memories.”

“Memories too beautiful not to be painful?”

Javier saw a shiver running down Blade’s body. “Yes,” Blade whispered. Then he raised his head: “I would like you not to buy me anything for breakfast anymore.”

Javier felt like a slingshot had thrown a stone into his heart. “Why?”

“I don’t want to owe you anything.”

“But it’s me, the one who owes you something.”

Blade didn’t reply. He just stared at him, with so much pain in his eyes that Javier lowered his. Nobody so young should suffer so much, he thought.

“Okay,” he said. “But maybe we can meet again? Have a tea or a walk together, like today?” The bus was approaching. What if Blade wouldn’t answer on time? “Mhm? What do you think about it?”

The bus was at the stop.

“Blade?” Javier pressed on.

“Okay,” Blade said finally. “It would be nice.”

Javier smiled while the bus doors opened. “Great.” He got on the bus. “Then… see you soon.”

“See you soon, Javier.”

The doors closed Blade’s smile outside, and Javier kept looking from the rear window at that boy who was Japanese but lived in Canada, who knew a lot about figure skating but was homeless, and who had just accepted to be, in some mysterious way, his friend.

Javier sat down, wondering if he was putting himself into some trouble and why he was more gleeful than concerned… hold on: he didn’t have Blade’s telephone number (by the way, did Blade own a telephone?), he didn’t even know his real name; how could they meet again? Right: it was up to Blade. Blade would choose when, how, and if.

Javier shook his head. You little bastard, he thought; and smiled.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuzuru didn’t answer. He was just breathing. Feeling the blades inside the sack he always kept on him, pressed between the wall and his back. They were too many, though. Four against one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Please note that in this chapter there's a scene about threatening and bullying. Nothing too graphic, I promise, but be aware. Thanks for reading!

Yuzuru stood watching the bus rumble away, and only when it disappeared around the corner did he start walking to his current _domicile_ : a parking garage in Victory Drive. Parking garages were usually good places: there was always a car or a van that just stayed there forever and that was big enough to hide you, when you wanted to sleep behind it; you could get in and out at any hour, day and night; there were toilets with sinks, mirrors, soap; and you could avoid rain or snow, if not cold.

The only downside was that walking from the bus stop out of the Cricket Club to the garage in Victory Drive took at least forty minutes; which, in Toronto on the 20th of November, meant you would definitely freeze. Yuzuru should have taken the 165 together with Javi, but he didn’t want to: first, he didn’t have a ticket, and when he could he didn’t want to steal, or break the rules; second, he preferred not to let Javi know that his last _domiciles_ were all close to the Cricket Club or to his place: Javi could think he was a stalker or something.

Yuzuru zipped his jacket, sank his nose into its collar and his hands in its pockets, the hoodie of his sweatshirt low on his forehead. He was freezing anyway. He should go to the Salvation Army and ask for a quilted jacket, a hat and a pair of gloves; and for thicker socks too. He would have liked to buy all that he needed, second hand maybe: when he took something at the Salvation Army he always had the feeling he was stealing from people more in need than him, or from people who didn’t have any other way to get clothes. Instead, _he_ had another way… no. Even though he couldn’t find any job, these days. Even though he always preferred to hurt himself than someone else. _No_. He couldn’t sell himself, he simply _couldn’t_. Flirting with a stranger, letting them touch him, kiss him, caress him, penetrate him… it was not only horrible and hard. It was unbearable, now.

Now. Which meant, since he met Javi.

Thinking about him, Yuzuru smiled. Since the first time they went together to a cafeteria, right before Skate Canada, they hadn’t met very often: when Javi had come back from the competition, equally glad and disappointed by his silver medal; two times before the second Grand Prix event; and now, after Javi had come back from Russia: they just went to the most famous pastry shop in Toronto to celebrate his gold medal at the Rostelecom Cup. Javi would have even liked to go dinner, but Yuzuru had refused: it would have been too much. Spending a whole evening with Javi, in a restaurant, laughing and joking and eating and feeling like a normal person? A person who had the right to enjoy a warm place and to have a good meal, a nice friend and some happiness? Too, too, too much. He didn’t deserve it. But he couldn’t totally do without it. That’s why he was always looking for some balance halfway: he didn’t meet Javi as much as he would have liked, but he did meet him; and every time he met Javi, he said to himself that it was enough, that he should stop seeing him, that he couldn’t allow himself that small, beautiful thing in his life; after a few days, though, Yuzuru found himself waiting for Javi outside the Cricket Club – and Javi smiled at him, asked “Where are we going?”, avoiding any other question, and for a while Yuzuru forgot who he was.

He hurried up. It was so cold, and he really needed a quilted jacket; therefore, he needed a job. He could try at St Lawrence or Kensington Market: in the last two weeks he hadn’t had any luck, but maybe now they were looking for someone to help cleaning when the market closed… Gosh, it was _freezing_ cold. He was nearly running now, and he reached the parking garage in just about half an hour. He waited for a couple to get off their car and go away, for a young man with a German Shepherd to get on his pick-up and drive away, then he checked there was nobody and went to retrieve his stuff: the sleeping bag was in the niche of a fire extinguisher, the sport bag with his few belongings was hidden under a stair, behind a stack of traffic cones. Thank God, there was everything. Homeless people were usually carrying their things with them, in plastic bags or in a shopping cart, but he’d never done that. He knew all too well how many people looked at any “typical” homeless person: with a mix of pity and contempt – while he needed potential employers to look at him with trust, and potential clients to look at him with want. Or, maybe, he was just not ready to be considered, and to consider himself, a real, definitive homeless person. Especially since he was in Toronto, daydreaming in front of the Cricket Club and hanging out with Javi.

Yuzuru reached the usual van, parked like always in a secluded corner and covered with a thick tarpaulin; there was not much room between its hood and the wall, but Yuzuru could hide quite well and sleep quite decently. He put down his sleeping bag, took out from his sport bag all his dirty clothes and a piece of soap and went to do his laundry in the toilet’s sink; when he was done, he washed himself, then looked for a car with its engine still hot; as he found it, he spread his laundry on the hood: in about twenty minutes, he would come back, take all of his clothes and look for another hot engine, so that (maybe) tomorrow he could wear some clean underwear. He went back to his sleeping bag and sat down. All he could see were greenish, scraped walls, a sign saying EXIT, and the beige tarpaulin covering the van. All he could do was sleeping, thinking, or reading the same old book he had with him since at least one year. He did not even have a phone to call… who? A friend? Javi, said a voice inside him. Javi, the Cricket Club, tomorrow: the only things to anchor him when his nightmares tried to drag him down into the abyss with them. The skaters he could see training through the big windows of the Cricket Club. Javi’s nose, always smeared with milk when he drank a cappuccino. Yuzuru smiled, then gasped, then hugged his knees and lowered his head.

And cried.

Yuzuru startled awake. What… it was raining down on him. In a parking garage? A stinking liquid that made his eyes burn. Urine?

“Hey, lads!” howled an unknown voice. “Our loo is shifting!”

Laughter. Yuzuru shook his head and put an arm on his face to protect his eyes while he stood quickly up. But he wasn’t halfway up yet, when a big strong hand grabbed him by the neck and slashed him against the wall.

“Uh, this chink stinks as fuck!” another voice said – closer: the voice of the guy who was keeping him nailed to the wall. “Well, that’s the final proof he’s actually a loo, isn’t it?”

Laughter, again.

Yuzuru was finally able to open his eyes, although they still burned. Four people, if there was nobody else behind the van. Young. Drunk. Two were big.

“So, what are you doing here?” The question came not from the bulky lad grabbing Yuzuru, but from a slender, almost handsome, and less drunk guy. The boss. “Do you sleep here? Do you _live_ here?”

Yuzuru didn’t answer. If he got the boss right, better not to take the spotlight off of him. Yuzuru just looked at him with what he hoped was a blank expression.

“Okay, let’s see.” The boss came closer to him, lighting a cigarette before taking a look around. “An old sleeping bag, an old sport bag with…” he put a feet on the opened zip of the bag to rummage inside of it, “oh, not so much. A pullover, a toothbrush… honey, if you brush your teeth but you don’t change your underwear, you will stink anyway, you know?” His friends laughed, almost on command. “Then… a book?” He crouched down to read the title. “ _Blindness_ by José Saramago. What is it, a manual for blind people? You hope to make a living as a guide dog?”

His friends laughed again. And again, Yuzuru didn’t answer. He was just breathing. Feeling the blades inside the sack he always kept on him, pressed between the wall and his back. They were too many, though. Four against one. If he tried to take out the blades, they could probably tear them away from him, use them against him.

“Well,” the boss sighed. He exhaled a spiral of smoke and threw the butt of his cigarette on the sleeping bag, crushing it under his boot. “I’m sorry, honey, I forgot that smoking is forbidden, here.”

Yuzuru looked at the sizzling hole that the butt had opened in his sleeping bag.

“What were we talking about?” the boss went on. Like he could have really forgotten it. “Oh yes, about your future career as a guide dog. Why don’t you show us how you wag your tail?” He turned to his mates. “Mhm? What do you think about, should he show us how he wags his tail?”

“Fuck, yes,” said one guy.

“Sure,” said another one.

“See?” The boss turned again to Yuzuru, with a cold smile on his lips. “All that we want is to help you getting ready for your next job interview.” The smile on his lips died, only the coldness remained. “Come on, get down on your fours.”

Yuzuru didn’t have to think about it. They were going to beat him up anyway.

“No,” he said. Gritting his teeth.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He didn’t exactly know what he was getting into, but he was going to get into it anyway.

“What?? You didn’t go out with Judith?” On the phone, Steve was incredulous.

“Yes, you heard me. I didn’t go out with Judith,” Javier said again, patiently.

Some seconds of stunned silence.

“I don’t get you,” Steve said finally. “You’re single, she’s beautiful and has a crush on you since prehistoric times…”

“…and I don’t have a crush on her, okay? Sometimes it happens, you don’t like someone even if they are beautiful.”

“Are you serious?”

“Steve, humankind would have died out a million years ago, if we fell only for who’s beautiful.” The dimple in Blade’s right cheek when he smiled – like a few hours ago, while Javier was telling him some backstage story from Rostelecom Cup… Javier shook his head: why the hell was he thinking about that _now_?

“Okay, okay.” Steve’s half laughter cut Javier’s thoughts and made Blade’s dimple disappear. “You became so mature, so virtuous… skating so much is no good, I tell you.”

“Not everyone has your ability to be a silly sixteen forever. Just because your wife is much more…” The sudden ring of the intercom interrupted him.

“U-hu!” Steve barked. “Our toreador has a midnight guest!”

“No, I don’t… but what the fuck is it??” Whoever was at the building’s intercom was probably glued to it: it was ringing without interruption. “It must be a drunk, or a sixteen like you who feels like making stupid jokes.”

“Who feels like breaking your eardrums, I’d say.”

“I need to go, Steve. Talk to you later.”

“Goodnight, mate!”

Javier hung up and went to the intercom, that kept ringing and ringing. What the hell was going on??

“Who’s there?” Javier asked.

Silence. No. Someone was breathing. Panting.

Then.

“Ja…vi.”

“Who’s there??” Javier asked louder. But he guessed he knew, and his body was covered with cold sweat already.

“Javi.”

“Blade! I’m coming.”

Forgetting to put his shoes on, he opened his apartment’s door and ran down the stairs, crossed the hall and opened the front door of the building.

Blade was lying against the wall, under the intercom panel, as if he ran out of his last energies by ringing Javi’s bell. His right eye was puffy, his face swollen, livid and covered with blood – and blood was everywhere, on his hands, on his jacket.

“Blade!” Javier went down on his knees and reached for his friend, but he stopped immediately, fearing he could hurt him. “What happened? Someone beat you up?”

Blade just nodded, keeping his eyes closed.

“Okay, don’t worry. I am here with you. Now I call for an ambulance, then…”

“No!” Blade snapped his left eye open. “No ambulance,” he stuttered. “No hospital.”

“Come on, look at you! You could have something broken, or…” Blade’s hand grabbed his t-shirt with desperate strength, and Javier couldn’t go on.

“Please,” Blade said. “Please.” Javier saw a tear falling down from Blade’s closed eye, running through blood and excoriations.

“Okay, okay, no hospital,” he said quickly. “Now I take you to my place, right?” Javier put an arm under Blade’s armpits as gently as he could. Blade stank badly – urine? – but who cared. “I’m going to get you on your feet, if you can please try to help me, okay? One, two, three…”

Blade made an ugly, suffering sound when Javier put him on his feet, but managed somehow to stand up. Javier helped him put an arm around his shoulders and grabbed his wrist. “Ready to walk?” No answer. “Okay, so… ready… steady… go!”

They started to stumble slowly toward the elevator across the hall, Blade whining from time to time or suddenly shivering, Javier overwhelmed by a chaos of thoughts: no hospital – so maybe Blade was an illegal immigrant, without any kind of valid document? Let’s hope nobody gets in or out of the building. He _needs_ to be seen by a doctor! Who’s, _who’s_ this boy?

Somehow they got to the elevator and went up to the second floor. In the open door of Javier’s flat, there was a calico cat.

“Move, Effie,” Javier ordered. The cat gave him a skeptical look, but stood up and padded away, so Javier carried Blade to his bedroom. He wasn’t sure whether it was better to keep him upright and awake or to lay him down and make him rest, so he went for a compromise: he led him to the bed, put some pillows behind his back and put his feet – oh, Blade had no shoes – on the bed too.

“Here you are… Blade, do you hear me?”

Blade nodded tiredly.

“Alright. I need to look for something to clean your wounds, okay?”

Silence. Javier took it as a yes and ran to the bathroom. What could he do? Okay, he had fallen so many times on the ice that he knew something about first aid, but he was not a physician, while Blade was in desperate need of a physician… the solution came to his mind as he walked back to the bedroom with his first aid kit.

Blade hadn’t moved, and Javier felt his heart clench when he looked at him: why, why a boy like him lived on the streets, where anything could happen to him? Blade seemed a boy who had attended good schools, and he had the manners and attitudes of a middle-class, highly educated family: what happened in Sendai, why he had to leave his town, his country, and go so far away only to be alone and live in the streets?

“Look, now I’m going to clean you a bit from all this blood and disinfect your wounds, okay?” Javier said while preparing what he needed.

“Okay,” Blade whispered.

“You should take off your jacket and your sweatshirt, though. Can you do it?”

“If you help me.”

“Sure.”

Javier helped him straighten up, lift his arms, and take off his jacket, sweatshirt, t-shirt. God, how much they stunk. Urine, yes. So he didn’t piss in his pants: someone had pissed on him. Poor boy. And his chest. Jesus. Javier pressed his lips in a thin line: Blade’s chest was a map of bruises and scratches. He felt like crying, while looking at that skin, so white and silky and tortured, but thank God it looked like there was only one serious, bloody wound.

“So, now I’m going to disinfect you,” Javier announced as soon as he was sure he could talk with a steady voice. “Sorry if it hurts.”

None of them said anything for a while; from time to time, the silence was broken by Blade whining or inhaling when Javier touched a particularly painful spot.

“My stuff,” Blade said at a certain point, while Javier was caring about his broken right eyebrow. “At the garage.”

“Mhm?”

“My sack.” Blade made a pause, inhaled some air to go on. “My shoes. Bag.” Pause, air. “Sleeping bag. I even put my clean laundry on the hood of a car, to get dry.”

Javier imagined some old, worn underwear drying on a hood, and felt tears in his eyes. He forced himself not to cry.

“Are you telling me that you’re sleeping in a parking garage and that your stuff is still there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you want me to go there and retrieve it.”

“It’s close. Victory Drive.”

It was really close. But if Blade was sleeping in Javier’s neighborhood, why hadn’t they taken the bus together, after hanging out some hours ago? A new question, adding to many others.

Sure, the sack Blade always had with him, _on_ him. Had his attackers taken it, destroyed it? That must be the reason why Blade was so concerned, even scared.

Javier took a new gauze, poured some disinfectant on it and started cleaning a corner of Blade’s mouth, encrusted with black dry blood. Blade showed the instinct of turning away, but then lay still.

“Now listen to me very carefully, and without interrupting me,” Javier said. “You need a doctor. I’m not saying I want to take you to the hospital, but you _do_ need a doctor. You know it, right? You could be concussed, or have an internal bleeding, or a broken bone, or… anyway: a friend of mine, Eve, she’s a physician. She’s a very discreet woman and I’m sure she will help us, if we ask her.” Blade was listening, staring at Javier with his only opened eye. “So,” Javier went on, “that’s what I want to do: I’m going to call Eve and ask her if she can come here. While she examines you, I will go to the garage and retrieve your stuff. Agreed?”

Blade didn’t say anything.

“Look, you asked for my help, didn’t you? Then, let me really help you. And… well, try to understand me. If you had something serious and I didn’t take care of it, then how could I live and forgive myself? Blade, please.”

Blade was still staring at him, with an intense expression that Javier couldn’t read but made his heart beat faster. They stared at each other, silent and still, for a while. Javier kept his legs almost astride Blade. His hand was on Blade’s upper lip, just a thin gauze separating their skins. A few inches between their faces.

“Okay,” Blade whispered finally, “yes.”

Javier came back to his senses. “Good boy,” he said with an uncertain smile, and stood up from the bed. “I call Eve, then.”

Blade tried to smile too and winced. “I’m waiting for you here.”

Javier reacted with an awkward chuckle and went look for his phone, with his legs unsure and his stomach aching.

******

“Of course it would be better to do some real exams, but I’m pretty certain that he’s not concussed and has no internal bleeding.”

“Thank God.”

“He has two broken ribs, and also his left ring finger and pinky are broken. Then he has many bruises, many scratches, but nothing more. He still has all his teeth, also his nose is miraculously whole, so… well, all in all he’s been lucky. I think his attackers were some drunk guys needing to… to do something to get excitement out of their system. Not someone who wanted to hurt _him_ specifically.”

“Yeah, I agree with you.”

“Look, I gave him a quite strong sedative. He will sleep at least until tomorrow morning, late morning. Then, he will still need to rest a lot. That boy is exhausted, and he’s undernourished. He will need to eat a lot and very healthy, so that he can put some weight on.”

“Oh, finally I can test my many abilities as a chef.”

“Here is the receipt for a painkiller, an anti-inflammatory and an inhaler for his asthma. And tomorrow I will come at noon to examine him again. Alright, Javi?”

“Alright. Thank you so much, Eve. So much.”

“You’re welcome. But… Javi, do you know what you’re getting into?”

“What do you mean?”

“That boy nearly preferred to _die_ than to go to the hospital. He probably knew that going to the hospital meant having the police asking him questions, and he didn’t want to. Why? He’s not a junkie, but he’s… _hiding_ , I think. And he has beautiful, perfect teeth, I’m quite sure he wore dental braces when he was younger. Only two fillings, made with the best materials five or six years ago. What’s his story? Who is he? Do you know anything about him?”

“I don’t.”

“But you’re willing anyway to… to be in charge of him? To be _responsible_ for him?”

“Yes.”

“You are such a good man, Javi. Crazy, of course, but you’re one of the best persons I’ve ever met.”

“I don’t deserve so much, but thank you anyway.”

“Okay, I’m going. See you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Eve, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Javi.”

*****

At 4.30 in the morning, even his flat, at the second floor of a building in a quite congested avenue, was perfectly silent. Only the rumbling of a car in the street and the buzzing of the washing machine in the bathroom could be heard, but they were so gentle that they melted in the quietness of the night.

Javier was sitting on an armchair he had moved to his bedroom, with Effie curled up in his lap. He was watching Blade sleep. When Javier came back from the garage, Eve and him had undressed and washed Blade, changed the bedsheets, and helped Blade to put one of Javier’s pajamas on – which was too big for him, and Javier had felt a warm sting of tenderness: seeing Blade drowning in all that fabric was like seeing a child playing with their parents’ clothes. When Eve had gone away, Javier had put Blade’s clothes and underwear in the washing machine and finally sat down to watch over his friend.

He was exhausted, and wide awake at the same time.

Blade was lying on some pillows, with the duvet pulled up to his chin; his breath wheezed through his half opened lips, and he didn’t look like a junkie, a drunk, a gangster or any of all the stereotypes you usually think about when you see a young homeless person. He just looked like who he was: a boy. A fragile, unlucky, but somehow miraculous boy.

Two hours ago, while running to the parking garage, Javier had asked himself the same question Eve would ask him later: did he really know what he was getting into? He had just welcomed into his home a perfect stranger; somebody with an unknown past – and an almost unknown present, if Javier thought about it: he had only a very personal and maybe wrong idea about how Blade lived. Was he really ready to give time, room and, most of all, trust to a stranger?

Then he had gotten to the garage.

It wasn’t hard to find Blade’s few belongings. On a car’s hood, there was a neatly spread rag and, over it, two pairs of boxers and two pairs of socks. The boxers were greyish, more than white, the cotton thin with use; the socks had holes on toes and heels. Behind a van parked in a far corner, Javier found everything else. An old sleeping bag smelling of fresh urine, with new and old holes and loose threads. The old, discolored sack the Blade always carried with him. And a sport bag with the logo of a discount chain on one side and full with a few items: toothbrush and toothpaste, a yellowish book, a brush with some teeth missing, a piece of soap in a small plastic bag. Blade’s boots were under a wheel of the van. And everywhere – on the tarpaulin covering the van, on the floor, on the sleeping bag, on the sport bag, on the wall – there was blood.

Blade’s blood.

The blood of a lonely boy who thought he was safe in a dirty, cold garage. Who had washed his underwear in the sink of a public toilet and had gone to sleep on a lurid floor, dust and the stink of gasoline his only company. Who had been beaten up by a gang of drunks.

In that moment, with tears running down his cheeks, Javier had found the answer to the question he had just asked himself: yes. Or, better: no, he didn’t exactly know what he was getting into, but he was going to get into it anyway. So far he had bought Blade some breakfast, shared with him the warmth and coziness of a cafe: was it enough to make him a generous, decent human being? Was it enough to convince him that a few paternalistic acts could make him a good, right man? Especially since he enjoyed spending time with Blade?

Javier had put everything into the sport bag, rolled up the sleeping bag. He was done with that easy, comfortable goodness, with that quick way to feel at ease with his conscience. Blade had come to him for help, right? So, he was going to help him, no matter how hard and uncomfortable it would or could be.

Now Javier stroked Effie’s back, still staring at Blade, so pale and beautiful in the street lamps’ lights seeping through the window. After Blade’s clothes, he was going to wash his sleeping and sport bags. Not his sack, though: Javier felt that Blade didn’t want anyone, not even him, to open it, and Javier preferred not to know anything about it anyway. While carrying it, he had heard, and felt under his hands, the clinking and hardness of two thin metal objects, and he didn’t want to know what they were. So: sport and sleeping bags into the washing machine, the old sack in some safe place. Then, he would go to a pharmacy to buy all the drugs Blade needed, to the mall to buy new socks and underwear, to the supermarket to buy fruit, chai tea, eggs, a big slice of strawberry pie.

And his own practice at 10.30 am? What about his practice?

Javier made Effie get down, stood up and went to find his phone in the living room. He stared at its display for a while, as if it could give him some answers, then he opened WhatsApp and wrote:

_Brian, tonight a friend of mine has been attacked by some gangster. He had two broken ribs and two broken fingers, nothing more, but I was with him all night long and I’m still so shook I can’t sleep. I’m not sure I’ll be at the club at 10.30: I know, the GPF is just around the corner, but I seriously risk to fall as soon as I try to jump. What do you think about it? Let me know, please. Thank you, Javi._

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie either, was it? Javier pressed SEND, put down the phone and went back to his bedroom. Effie was lying against Blade’s hip, and she was sound asleep. Did she trust him – she, who was always so distrustful of everyone?

“Goodnight,” Javier whispered to his cat and to his friend. Then went to the living room and opened the sofa bed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A house.  
> A home.

Yuzuru tried to open his eyes, but he had the feeling he could raise only one eyelid. He had the foggy vision of a door, a wall, a poster of… something, maybe a soccer team. The air smelled of clean laundry and – and? Coffee? Every part of his body ached. There was something warm pressed against his hip, something… purring? He thought he heard someone saying “Good morning.” He thought he felt someone’s hand on his forehead. “Mom?” he said, or thought. He fell into a dark well, again.

“Blade.”

A light above his head, out of the well.

“Blade.”

Once again, the feeling he could raise only one eyelid.

“Do you hear me?”

That hand on his forehead. Yuzuru turned his head and met Javi’s warm smile.

“Javi?”

“Hello! I’m sorry to wake you up, but Eve, here, needs to check on you. Can you stay awake, yes?”

Javi’s hand was still on Yuzuru’s forehead, his thumb was slowly caressing his skin, and Yuzuru wished he could just close his eyes again, not to sleep but to enjoy Javi’s gentle touch, to pretend that nothing else existed in the world.

“Yes,” he said, even though speaking was a bit hard, “I can.”

“Good. Effie, _princesa_ , get down.” Javi took his hand away and stepped back, while in Yuzuru’s field of vision appeared a woman he thought he had already met. The woman was smiling.

“Hello, Blade,” she greeted him. “How are you?”

The woman’s name must be Eve. Now the air smelled of roses.

“It hurts,” he said, “everywhere.”

The air didn’t smell of coffee anymore.

“Your head?”

“It hurts, too.”

Where was Javi?

“It is, like, headache? Or you have vertigo? Or you feel confused?”

He wanted Javi’s hand on his forehead.

“Like headache.”

“Good. I mean, I know that your head hurts, but in your situation it’s good news. Now…”

“Where’s Javi?”

A pause.

“Javi? I don’t know, in the living room, maybe. Why?”

“Can he stay here?”

“I need to examine you, Blade.”

“I know. But can he stay here?”

Some seconds of hesitation. On the poster there was actually a soccer team. Real Madrid.

“Javi!” Eve called out. “Can you come here, please?”

“Coming!” Javi’s voice, muffled, from another room; then, closer: “What’s the matter?”

Yuzuru tried to turn his head toward the voice, but it hurt so much that he gave up and kept looking in front of him.

“Blade would like you to stay here.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The wall was painted in a warm tone of cream. Beyond the door in front of him, Yuzuru could see a sink. Everything disappeared behind Javi’s face, smiling and leaning down on him.

“I stay here with you, yes?” Javi said, with affection, patience, and not an inch of irony. Yuzuru smiled, even if his mouth pulled and ached.

“Thank you,” he said, then he let Eve examine him, his aching body soothed by the aroma of coffee, by the warmth of Javi’s hand on his shoulder.

Besides the Real Madrid poster, there were other things hanging on the creamy wall: a frame full of pictures, the print of a painting by… Chagall, yes. On another wall, a big wooden bookshelf was loaded with books, magazines, comics, ornaments, trophies. In front of it, on a huge orange pillow on the floor, a calico cat was peacefully sleeping.

A house.

A _home_.

The bed sheets were clean and smelled of soap. A radio or a TV was on somewhere, two people were chatting and sometimes a collective laughter came in (a sit-com?). Somebody was clearly busy in the kitchen.

Javi.

“Hey, you’re awake. How…” Javi fell silent, and a second after Yuzuru felt the mattress sag under Javi’s weight, and Javi’s gentle hand on his cheek. “Are you crying?”

Yuzuru closed his eyes. “Apparently,” he said, hopefully with a humorous tone; his voice was trembling, though.

“Why? Are you in pain? I mean, _more_ in pain than…”

“No no,” Yuzuru said hastily, “no. It’s just that… a true home, a true bed…” he couldn’t say anything else. He stayed like that, his eyes closed, the tears running silently down his cheeks while Javi’s fingers wiped them away.

“Well, don’t get used to it too much,” Javi said. “In a month there will be the Grand Prix Final, and I will need to sleep in my bed very soon.”

Javi’s tone was light and kind, but his words felt like stones thrown against Yuzuru’s heart. He opened up his eyes (a small corner of his brain registered that he could raise a little bit also his left eyelid), stopping to cry.

“Of course,” Yuzuru said, “sure. I’m so sorry. Give me a couple of hours and I go away. No, I can go right now. Yes.” He threw the bedsheets away. “You were so kind, and… ouch!” Despite all the painkillers he had taken, his broken ribs shouted as soon as he tried to sit up.

“Hey hey hey, calm down!” Javi grabbed his shoulders and forced him gently to lie down against the pillows again. “You don’t have to go away, that’s not what I meant.” Javi shook his head, smiling. “Blade, I was talking about the _bed_ , only about the bed. I need to sleep well before the Grand Prix Final, you know? I need to sleep in a real bed, and the sofa bed in my living room is _not_ a real bed.” Yuzuru had lowered his head, and Javi put two fingers under his chin and made him lift his head again. “You can stay here as long as you want,” he said. “But as soon as you can, _you_ will sleep in the sofa bed.”

Yuzuru stared at him. Javi’s eyes were intense and warm, just like his fingers under Yuzuru’s chin. “That’s all?” he hesitated.

“That’s all.”

“But how can I pay you, Javi? I have no money.”

“Pay me?” Javi flinched, surprised, lowering his fingers. “You need help, so I’m helping you. Right? For free. When you help a friend, you do it for free, don’t you?”

To hell his aching ribs: Yuzuru sat up and threw his arms around Javi’s neck. He was crying again.

“It’s alright, Blade, mhm?” Javi awkwardly patted his back. “It’s alright. And you still haven’t tried my sofa bed. You wouldn’t be so grateful, in that case.”

Yuzuru burst into a sobbing, teary laughter that echoed painfully behind his broken ribs. “Okay,” he said finally, “it’s alright. I’m alright.”

“Good boy.” Javi broke their hug and reached for the nightstand to pick up a small pillbox and a glass of water. “Time to take some drugs,” he said.

Yuzuru took the box, opened it, put the two pills that were inside of it into his mouth and swallowed them with all the glass of water: he hadn’t realized he was so thirsty.

“Now it would be great if you ate something,” Javi said, putting the glass down on the nightstand. “Are you hungry?”

“Hungry like the wolf. Before eating, though, I… well…” Yuzuru felt his face and neck turn red like flames. “Mhm, I need to go to the loo.”

Javi looked unimpressed. “Well, obviously,” he said. “Okay, I will help you to stand up and walk to the bathroom. Ah, I didn’t look into your sack, but I did look into your sport bag, and… well, I put your toothbrush on the sink, your clean underwear on the shelf by the shower, and I put some towels for you on the rack. Okay?”

Yuzuru started crying again.

*****

Javi’s apartment was weird, somehow. It looked like it had been designed in a “Wish I could, but I can’t” kind of spirit: you entered directly into a living area, with a low wall dividing the actual living room from the kitchen, which was small but had ambitious, too big furniture that tried (in vain) to give it an American ranch’s allure. The bedroom was quite small because a part of it had been walled up and turned into a walk-in closet that Javi used as a junk room with stacks of bags, boxes full of useless stuff, and a dusty exercise bike. The tiny bathroom had no shower but a tub where you couldn’t stretch your legs, short as it was. Javi had told Yuzuru that it was the nicest place he could afford to rent in Toronto, but it wasn’t that bad: there was so much light, despite being only on the second floor, the furniture was nice and it had a quite big balcony overlooking a tree-lined avenue. And Yuzuru just _loved_ the tub.

He closed his eyes and dived into the water to his chin, enjoying the sounds his movements caused and the small bubbling of the soap. God, having a _bath_. After four days of lying in bed, sleeping, taking drugs, eating hyper nutritious meals and standing up only to go to the loo and to clean single parts of his body, dribbling through scabs and wounds, that afternoon Eve had finally allowed him to take a normal, total bath.

Ah, wasn’t it marvelous…

He wished he could spend a whole day in that tub. Then sleep again. Then take another bath. Then eat – in a dish, in _more_ than a dish!, with a _napkin_ in his lap! Fish and meat and vegetables and bread and fruits and pasta, various and abundant and with salt, oil, butter, _spices_! It was a miracle.

And a miracle had been having dinner with Javi yesterday, and having lunch with him today. Javi had prepared a tray for Yuzuru, a tray for himself and brought both on the bed. They had talked all meal long, like two friends who like to spend some quality time together. Yesterday, after dinner, since Yuzuru didn’t feel too tired, Javi had brought the TV set to the bedroom and they had watched a movie together: _Young Frankenstein_ by Mel Brooks. They had laughed so much, and since then they didn’t say “Hi” or “Bye” anymore, they said “Taffeta, Javi” and “Taffeta, Blade.”

Yuzuru looked at his fingertips: white and wrinkled after being in the water for so long. He smiled. All in all, it didn’t take so much to smile: sleeping in a bed, keeping yourself clean, watching a movie. And spending time with Javi. Yuzuru sighed, feeling the usual throb of fear and happiness. Javier Fernández, one of the best skaters in the world, one of Yuzuru’s idols, had welcomed him into his home. And was his friend. Javi cooked for him, took care of him, trusted him when he left Yuzuru alone in his apartment. And Yuzuru felt surprised, exhilarated and thankful: rescuing Javi’s skates and watch had been a fair, maybe brave act, but what Javi had given and was giving him was so much more. And Yuzuru surely didn’t deserve it.

With a sigh, he stood cautiously up and left the tub, wrapping himself in a towel. Feeling the softness of terrycloth on his skin gave him a shiver of pleasure. And he felt another shiver thinking of the soft, clean cotton he was going to wear: Javi had bought him some clothes, so now Yuzuru was going to wear a pair of clean shorts, comfortable track pants and a comfortable long-sleeved t-shirt, a pair of warm socks…

It’s so easy to get used to comfort, he thought. It’s so easy to discard old, sad habits – sleeping outside, eating and washing yourself when and if possible, being always careful, being always alone, alone, alone… but he would go back to those habits very soon. He couldn’t play upon Javi’s hospitality for much longer. Three or four days, maybe five, then he would go back out in the streets. Yuzuru looked at his feet, at his nails: clean, short and neatly shaped. Effie, who had waited for him just outside the tub, rubbed purring against his calf, and Yuzuru reached for her little head and scratched her behind her ears.

He had the feeling that getting rid of his new, happy habits was going to be very, very hard.

Yuzuru had cleaned the tub, put in order all his things – he always tried not to leave too many traces of himself in Javi’s apartment – and he’d just gone back to bed, exhausted already, when he heard the key turning inside the hole of the front door.

Yuzuru smiled: in a few seconds, Javi would say ‘ _¡Hola!_ ’ and appear on the bedroom’s threshold, his cheeks red with cold and his hair flattened by his winter cap…

“ _¡Hola!_ ” Javi said, and then, lower: “Come… pay attention.”

Yuzuru sat up in the bed. Noises in the living room, a male voice, a female voice… Eve?

“ _¡Hola, chico!_ ” Javi appeared on the bedroom’s threshold, cheeks red and hair flat.

“Hi,” Yuzuru greeted him.

“How are you? Oh, hi Effie, _querida_.”

“Quite well, but… what’s happening?”

“Oh, if they don’t kill themselves before, there are the Steves with your bed.”

The Steves with your, well, _his_ bed? If they didn’t kill themselves?

“Javi, I don’t…”

“Hey you two, wait! Put it down. There. Effie, get away dear.” Javi disappeared outside the bedroom while Effie ran to her orange pillow. Yuzuru heard a loud thud on the floor, and after a second Javi came back on the threshold, followed by Eve and by a blonde young man.

“Hi,” the young man greeted Yuzuru. “Hi, Blade,” Eve said.

“You’ve already met Eve,” Javi said. “And he’s Steve, Eve’s husband and my best friend.”

“Nice to meet you.” Steve nodded at Yuzuru. “Anyway, it’s easier if you call us the Steves. Steve, Eve, the Steves.”

Oh. Now he was starting to understand some little thing. Very little.

“Right. I’m Blade.”

“Wow! In my next life I want a name like that.”

“How are you doing?” Eve had leaned over Yuzuru and was touching the skin under his left eye, still a bit swollen and blue.

“I’m still a bit aching, and weak, but I feel better every passing day,” he said distractedly: Javi and Steve were in the junk room, and Yuzuru could hear them talking and moving things.

“Are you taking your drugs?” Eve insisted.

“Yes, but…”

“What about eating?”

“I eat a lot, really. But what’s happening? Javi?”

Javi came back with a cardboard box in his hands. “We’re clearing your room,” he said, smiling.

“My…?”

“We’re taking these boxes down to the cellar, the Steves are going to inherit my useless exercise bike, and…”

“ _Inherit?_ It’s a _payment_ , a very _due_ payment, after we had to drag here our bed for the guests.”

Yuzuru barely heard Steve’s words. Breathless and with his heart throbbing in his throat, he was staring at Javi.

“What does it mean, my room?” he asked slowly. He had the feeling he was thinking and talking in slow motion. Just his heart was racing.

Javi was still smiling at him, but the look in his eyes was serious. “I know it’s nothing beautiful, or great,” he said. “It’s such a tiny room, and there’s no window. But it’s the best we can do.”

Yuzuru brought a hand to his forehead, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, and it was true: he couldn’t believe his eyes, and his ears.

“Javi, you don’t have to feel like you owned me s…”

“Look, we’ll talk about it later, okay? I need to exploit the Steves as long as they are here.” There was a kind of prayer in Javi’s eyes: _later, later_.

“Okay,” Yuzuru nodded. “Can I help you?”

“Sure. Stay in bed and rest,” Eve said sharply. Then she stroked his forehead, with a sweet smile on her lips. “We three can manage everything, don’t worry.”

Yuzuru nodded again and laid down. For about one hour, he watched Javi and the Steves carrying boxes, bric-a-brac and the bike away; he watch them dragging into the former junk room a single bed with a simple, wooden blue headboard, then a mattress, a pillow, a duvet, some bed sheets, a night lamp, a couple of wooden boxes and some other things that Yuzuru couldn’t see well.

So it was really happening, wasn’t it?

Javi, Javier Fernández, was preparing a room for him, Yuzuru – or better, for Blade, a homeless boy about whom he doesn’t know a thing, not even his name.

“Okay, I think we can’t do anything more for now,” Javi sighed finally, as the Steves and he stopped carrying stuff in and out of the former junk room. “What about a beer, as a first thank you?”

“ _Many_ beers, I’d say,” Steve corrected him. “I need at least _three_ , for…”

“ _No_ beer, thanks,” Eve interrupted her husband. “I’m afraid I’m going to confirm the killjoy-wife-stereotype, but tomorrow morning I have two surgeries and I don’t feel like lingering here until two o’clock in the morning, listening to one of your typically delirious chats.”

“Delirious??” Javi made a fake offended face. “Steve, maybe, but I’m an elite athlete, and I’m training seriously for the…”

“For the Grand Prix Final, yes. One more reason not to drink _any_ beer tonight. Come on, Steve, let’s go.”

“I thought that marrying an older woman meant I could be deeply, happily and healthily irresponsible,” Steve pretended to complain.

“Call me _old_ once again and you won’t play with your PlayStation for two months.”

“No no no, no conjugal crises here!” Javi caressed Eve’s cheek and patted Steve’s shoulder. “Come on, I’m taking you to the door.”

“Why, has your door moved since when I last saw it a few minutes ago?” Steve half laughed. “There’s no need, Javi. See you. Bye, Blade!”

“Bye bye,” Eve said, and they both walked out of the bedroom. After a few seconds, Yuzuru heard them opening the front door and closing it behind them.

Javi and him were alone.

“Javi…” Yuzuru stuttered. He couldn’t add anything else: he was staring at Javi’s big, Latin eyes and thoughts were dying in his brain long before turning into words.

Javi gave him a warm smile. “So, don’t you want to see your room?” he asked.

Yuzuru barely found the energy to nod, leave the bed and step to the threshold between the bedroom and the former junk room.

“I told you, it’s really tiny and dark,” Javi sighed by Yuzuru’s side, “but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

_His_ room.

It was so small that the bed’s head and foot touched the walls; beside the bed, there was a nice wooden fruit box as a nightstand, with a night lamp and – Yuzuru’s heart missed a beat, when he realized it – _Blindness_ by Saramago. The metal shelf against the opposite wall, the one where all Javi’s boxes had laid, now hosted Yuzuru’s sport bag and sack, three sets of towels, some fresh underwear and clothes, three matching blue, still empty containers of different sides. A blue modern carpet, some colored pillows spread over the floor, another fruit box and an orange lamp hanging from the ceiling completed the furniture of the room.

“You can put your stuff on the shelf, in the wooden box and in those three small containers,” Javi said. “Then, step by step you can add, I don’t know, some paintings, or some posters, or… and yes, it is quite dark since there’s no window, but if you leave the door opened, you ca…”

“It’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen,” Yuzuru interrupted him, and he meant it. A room. Created for him. What could be better in the whole world? And yet… Yuzuru turned to Javi. “Why?” he asked him.

Javi didn’t answer: he looked sincerely surprised by the question. “ _Why?_ What do you mean?” he said finally.

Yuzuru waved around him. “Why this room,” he said. “You did so many things for me already, I…”

“So what should I do now, send you back out in the streets?” Javi shook his head, an incredulous and bitter smirk on his lips. “I could not even sleep anymore. So, actually, I do what I do not only for you, but for me as well.”

“You are too good to be true,” Yuzuru whispered. He wanted to touch Javi’s cheek, to hug him.

“No,” Javi said simply, “I’m just your friend.”

Yuzuru hugged him.

*****

“Have you ever heard about the great earthquake and tsunami in Eastern Japan?” Yuzuru asked. When he had hugged Javi, his friend had wrapped his arms around him, and they’d stood like that for a while, their hearts beating both so fast. Then Yuzuru had broken their hug and done what his instinct was telling him to do: he had to tell Javi the truth; a part of it, at least.

“Of course,” Javi answered. “When was it, two years ago?”

“Three and a half. The 11th of March 2011. One of the most hit towns was Sendai. My town.”

Javi was staring at him with a thousand questions in his eyes.

“It was my grandpa’s birthday,” Yuzuru went on. “My whole family was at my place. My parents, my sister, all my grandparents, all my uncles and aunts, even many friends. Everyone I cared about. Everyone, but me. I, I was late.” Yuzuru looked away. He couldn’t look at Javi, now. He started pacing across the room, touching every object. “When the earthquake started, I… well, I tried to run home, as soon as I could. But my home wasn’t there anymore. The whole building, the whole block, nearly the whole district had collapsed. And all the people who were there… in the district, in the block, in... they didn’t exist anymore, just like my home.” He heard Javi gasping, but he didn’t turn to him. “So I started pretending I didn’t exist anymore as well. Okay, I wasn’t really pretending.” He sat on the bed, staring at his hands in his lap. “And I couldn’t remain in Japan. I couldn’t stand it. I don’t know exactly why. Staying there, seeing all that the people were suffering and going through… seeing my pain reflected in other survivors’ pain… so, my only goal became running away.” He sighed, shaking his head. “It wasn’t easy, leaving Japan without a passport, money, without anything. But after some months I succeeded. Since then, I’ve been in so many places. China, Siberia, Korea, Alaska… then I came here. I knew that in Toronto there was a great coach of my favorite sport, figure skating. So I started hanging around the Cricket Club.” Yuzuru shrugged. “And… well, you know how my story goes on,” he ended, at last looking at Javi: he was standing still on the door, shock written all over his face and in his posture. When their eyes met, though, he moved: he reached Yuzuru and sat beside him on the bed, put a hand on his shoulder.

“I would like to tell you that I know how you felt and how you still feel,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be true. I don’t know. It’s too… too huge, too abnormal, too… too much. I’m so sorry, Blade. So sorry.”

“I know,” Yuzuru said, putting for a moment his hand on Javi’s.

“If there’s something I can do, if…”

“I’m not a good person, Javi.” Yuzuru stood up and walked to the shelf, leaned with his back against it. “I didn’t deserve to survive, it just… happened. I was late, that’s all. I was… wrong. And instead of helping my country to start again, I ran away. Instead of facing my and everyone’s pain, instead of helping my people to get over… you see how I chose to live. As a homeless person, in the streets. In any street, as long as it’s not Japanese. And I don’t do anything for anyone. I just live day by day, finding ways to…”

“Blade,” Javi interrupted him, “I don’t care if you did something… illegal, in order to survive. If you’ve stolen, or…”

“I don’t steal!” Yuzuru realized he had nearly screamed. He lowered his voice: “It’s the only principle I always stick to: I don’t do anything good, but I don’t do anything bad either. I try to never, ever hurt anybody. If I’m really, deeply in trouble, if I desperately need money to eat… okay, from time to time I… I hurt myself. But nobody else.”

Javi stared at him for some seconds, then understanding struck him and his eyes went big with surprise, at first. Then with… compassion, pity, empathy? Sadness, for sure. Javi stood up, and Yuzuru found himself wrapped in his arms again.

“It’s over,” Javi said. “If you want, it’s over. It’s three years and a half that you punish yourself. Enough. You should look ahead now, not only behind you. I sound so melodramatic, I know. I know how to skate but not how to talk, sorry. But please, _please_ , try to… well, maybe you can’t forgive yourself, not yet, but try to… to give yourself a chance. Please, Blade.”

“Yuzuru.”

Javi pulled back a bit to look into Yuzuru’s eyes. “What?” he hesitated.

“That’s my name,” Yuzuru explained. “Everybody calls me Blade, sure, but my real name is Yuzuru.”

“Yuzuru.”

“Or Yuzu. Yes.”

Javi hugged him again. “Thank you, Yuzu,” he said, his voice full of emotion.

Yuzuru pressed his face in the crook of Javi’s neck, breathed Javi’s scent. And knew that his galloping heart and his clenching stomach had nothing to do with his confession and with his new room.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out in the streets, he was still Blade: a lonely boy in a foreign land, without a family, without a job; that flat, instead, was a place he could belong to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will never thank LadyLightning enough for being my beta, and I will never thank you all enough for reading <3

When Javi walked out of the bathroom, he smelled a rich aroma of coffee coming from the kitchen. He finished packing his sport bag with a smile all over his face. At the beginning, Yuzu’s coffee was undrinkable, but within a month he had become kind of a coffee magician. Javier zipped his bag, then tiptoed to the living room’s door: he liked to peep for a few seconds at what was happening in the kitchen without being seen. Now Yuzu was standing at the counter, waiting for the kettle to whistle. He still hasn’t been in the bathroom – he didn’t want to wake Javier up too early, or to slow him down once Javier was awake – and his hair was pulled up in a chaotic half-bun. He wore a long-sleeved t-shirt, comfortable track pants and soft no-slip socks.

Javier realized he still had a smile on his face. It often happened to him, since Yuzu lived there: the boy was undeniably lighting up his days. A constant but not intrusive presence, caring but not oppressive. And Javier liked to have breakfast with him, laugh a bit, and find him at home when he came back, so that they could have dinner together and talk. He’d never like his girlfriends to stay at his place for too long – after a couple of days, he began feeling weird and slightly annoyed – but living with that boy was easy, even natural. Why? Javier had no idea.

“Good morning,” he said, walking finally into the room. Effie came and rubbed against his calves, and Javier crouched to stroke her fur.

Yuzu turned to him and smiled. “Good morning,” he said, “breakfast’s ready.”

There it was, the dimple in Yuzu’s right cheek. And his eyes were two happy commas.

“Javi?”

Javier snapped out of his contemplation. “Yes,” he said, looking at the small but perfectly set table in the living room: coffee, fresh orange juice, scrambled eggs, toasts… everything that was in Javier’s diet, everything healthy and good. “Thank you, Yuzu.” He sat down.

“You’re welcome.” Yuzu poured some water in his red and yellow Winnie the Pooh mug and went to sit down at the table, in front of Javier.

“Last night I had a strange dream,” Javier said after the first, blessed sip of coffee. “So complicated, it seemed like the plot of a movie. Someone kidnapped Effie, and…”

“Oh, no!” Yuzu jumped up and ran to take Effie in his arms, then came back to the table. “Poor Effie-chan… I don’t like this dream.” Effie looked happy to be wrapped in Yuzu’s arms, and purred as loud as a tractor.

“Hey, wait to know how it goes on,” Javier protested. “So, someone kidnapped her, and you and me went to look for her in the park near the Cricket Club. I don’t know why, but we were sure that we could find her there. Actually, we _did_ find her, but we decided we had to find her kidnappers too and send them to jail.”

“Of course! Who dares to hurt Effie deserves a very _cruel_ jail.” Yuzuru made Effie lie in his lap – she curled herself up and fell instantly asleep – and took a sip of his tea.

“Well, we started an actual investigation, so we ran all around the town, even though it didn’t quite look like Toronto, it looked more like Madrid… have you ever been in Spain?”

“No, never.”

“Well, Spain is so… _different_ from here. There’s everything. Mountains and beaches and even the desert, cold and warm places, places where the air is so still and humid that you can’t breathe, places where the wind can carry you away… and there’s the people. People there are able to… to give the town such a special mood… it’s good for your soul, you know? Cheerful, lively, but not too stressful. On New Year’s Eve, for instance: we all go out in the street, in a square especially, Puerta del Sol, and we wait for midnight. When only twelve seconds are missing, we count down all together, eating one grape for every passing second…”

“One grape?”

“Yes. Everyone brings twelve grapes and some champagne, so that at midnight we can eat and drink, then we exchange our wishes. With friends, with relatives, with strangers, it doesn’t matter.”

Javier fell silent, took the cup to his lips and drank some coffee to swallow down the sudden lump in his throat. When he put down his cup, he found Yuzu’s slanted eyes staring at him. Warm, and sure.

“In 2018, at the Olympic Games in Korea, you will be on the podium,” Yuzu said, and the tone of his voice told Javier that he wasn’t trying to comfort him: he really believed in what he was saying. “So you will be able to go back to Spain.”

Javier smiled uncertainly. “Okay,” he said. The lump in his throat was gone.

“Good,” Yuzu said, then reached for Javier’s wrist and held it tight.

Javier looked down at his wrist, the feeling of Yuzu’s smooth skin on his new and strong. Where Yuzu will be, Javier wondered, when in 2018 I will be on the podium in Korea? He hoped, he really hoped Yuzu would still be a part of his life.

“Come on, Javi.”

“No.”

“You. Are. Baaaaad.”

“No, I am in the Grand Prix Final.”

“I only asked you for a sip of your coffee, not to go to Barcelona instead of you.”

“There’s a fantastic cafeteria, here at the Cricket Club, where Max will be more than happy to make some fresh coffee for you.”

“But your coffee is better. Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”

“Okay, Nam, okay! Only because it’s you.”

Javier opened his thermos and poured out a half cup of coffee for his training mate. “Happy, now?”

Nam drank, closing his eyes. “Aaaaaah! I never drank a better coffee than yours, Javi.”

“Thank you.” Javier took another sip as well. It was actually delicious. Nam mockingly punched him in his shoulder.

“Hey, don’t blow your own horn, right?” he said. “I’m perfectly aware that it wasn’t you who made this very precious coffee. It was your little Japanese wifey.”

“ _Baka_.”

“Uh?”

“That’s what he said to me this morning, when I told him that you call him my _little Japanese wifey_.”

“I have a suspicion that I know what this word means,” Nam said.

“It means silly… said with affection.” With his mind’s eye, Javier saw Yuzu giving him the thermos at the front door.

_It’s not my usual thermos…_

_No, I bought a bigger one, so that you can give some coffee to your training mate, Nam._

_I’m not sure he deserves it._

_Of course he does, he’s becoming a great skater. But can you tell him something from your little Japanese wifey?_

_What?_

Baka _. It means silly, but said with affection._

“Maybe I’m _bak_ -something, but seriously, mate: that guy is caring and attentive like a loving wife,” Nam said, putting down his empty cup.

“You have such a macho vision of life, Nam.”

Nam snapped his towel on Javier’s arm. “It’s _you_ who has a friend at your service,” he said.

_I don’t want you to be at my service_.

That’s what Javier had said to Yuzu some time ago. Yuzu kept the flat clean and tidy, went to the grocery store, ran all the errands, cooked, filled the bathtub for Javier when he came back from the club – and Javier felt guilty. He wasn’t sure how to address such an issue: how can you complain, when a friend is trying to show you their gratitude? To “pay their debts”? Javier had said to Yuzu that he didn’t have to worry about money, and that he would pay his share of the rent and the bills when he would find a real job. Actually, Yuzu didn’t “cost” so much to Javier, and most of all Javier didn’t want him to feel the need to earn some money: what if Yuzu thought he had to go back to _that_ job? The only idea filled Javier with terror. And yet, when he had seen Yuzu handwashing _his_ , Javier’s, dirty training clothes, he _had_ to speak.

_I don’t want you to be at my service_.

“You’re just jealous,” he said now to Nam, snapping in his turn his own towel on Nam’s shoulder. “Come on, showeeer! You make me waste my precious time when I’m literally _starving_.”

“Just for a change,” Nam said. “Sleeping and eating: the real priorities of Javier Fernández, our Neanderthal,” and he disappeared down the shower area.

When Javier had said those words, Yuzuru had looked at him with an almost wounded look in his eyes.

_You don’t want me to touch your things?_ he had asked him, and Javier had wished he could bite his tongue: he didn’t want Yuzuru to feel just a guest.

_No, Yuzu, it is not… the point is, you are too kind. You take care of everything, and I’m not used to it, and most of all I’m not sure it’s right. We both live here, we should share all the chores, all the… fifty/fifty, you know?_

_But you work. I mean, you skate, that’s your job. I have so much more free time than you._

_Okay, that’s true. So, can we share… sixty/forty, then?_

_What about seventy/thirty?_

Javier had stared at Yuzu’s face, so serious and hopeful; he had thought of Yuzu watering and speaking to the plants, or coming home with something new for his room; and he had eventually understood: Yuzu _needed_ to take care of the apartment. Out of gratitude, sure, but first and foremost out of his need to feel that Javier’s apartment was also _his_ apartment – his home. Out in the streets, he was still Blade: a lonely boy in a foreign land, without a family, without a job; that flat, instead, was a place he could belong to, and he took care of it as if he needed the flat to accept him.

_Seventy/thirty_ , Javier had said in the end. _Deal_.

Yuzu had smiled, put his forehead on Javier’s shoulder for a moment. From then on, they had never talked about it anymore; Yuzu had stopped handwashing Javier’s training clothes, but he still took care of most of the chores.

Now Javier took a quick shower, put something clean on for his afternoon practice, got out of the locker room and headed to the cafeteria. He immediately spotted Brian at a table and walked to him.

“Hey… oh, sorry,” Javier said as soon as he realized that his coach was talking on the phone.

Brian waved Javier’s apologies away and gestured for him to sit down. He looked annoyed. Why? The morning practice had been fine. Maybe it had nothing to do with skating. Brian finished the phone call.

“Sorry, Javi,” he said. “Small troubles.”

“ _I_ am sorry… can I buy you a coffee?”

“A chamomile would be a better choice!” Brian tried a smile that came out more as a grimace. “Well, maybe it’s a better choice for you too. Nick has just quit.”

Nick. The Cricket Club’s handyman. A constant, grudging presence in Javier’s life.

“He quit?” Javier repeated.

“Yeah.” Brian ran his fingers through his hair, like he wanted to check if that nth trouble had caused further loss. “Lately, he was grudging more than ever…”

“… and working worse than ever,” Javier intervened, “I know.” Oh yes, he knew it even too well: lately, the locker room was always a mess, and one morning he’d had a quite hard fall on the ice because it had been badly resurfaced.

“Well, this morning he didn’t show up,” Brian told him. “At the moment, we just thought he was late. After a while, we started getting worried, and we called him. When he finally answered, he said that he was home and meant to stay there, because this is a _ship of fools_. His words, not mine.”

Javier, who was opening the plastic box with his _bentō_ , stopped. “That’s all?” he hesitated. “I mean, maybe the Cricket _is_ a ship of fools, but he could call and tell he wasn’t going to work here anymore.”

“He could, but he didn’t.” Brian chuckled in disbelief. “Actually, he was annoyed because we had woken him up.”

“I hope you didn’t apologize…”

“No, but he probably wanted us to. Anyway, now we need someone else as soon as possible.” Brian ran again a hand through his hair. “Especially for the Zamboni and especially now, when we are so close to the Grand Prix Final.”

“Well, I can drive the Zamboni, or…”

“No, Javi. Don’t you even think about it. You can’t stay here every day until 8 pm to resurface the ice. You must focus on the Final, and only on the Final. For now Ghislain and I will take care of it, then we’ll see.”

“I’m sorry.” Feeling a bit guilty because he was so hungry and had his mouth watering, Javier took his _bentō_ and bit into it. God, it was delicious. He moaned with pleasure.

Brian chuckled again. “Apparently, your friend is also a very good cook, isn’t he?”

Javier swallowed. “Well, he’s actually teaching me how to prepare a proper _bentō_ and we made this one together, but yes, he’s so good at everything, and…”

…and the solution for the Cricket Club showed brightly up in his mind.

From behind the glass doors, Javier watched Yuzuru get off the bus and walk to the building. It was some time that he didn’t watch him from a distance, and his friend’s graceful, elegant pace caught him by surprise. Was it a gift of nature? Maybe. Was it the result of some years of ballet classes? Maybe. They lived together, but Javier knew just a few things about Yuzuru. Yuzu didn’t like to speak about his past and Javier didn’t insist on it, but there were times when curiosity ate him alive.

“Oh, about time!” Javier sighed when Yuzu appeared in front of him.

“Well, next time I will rent a helicopter and be here in no time, okay?” Yuzuru was smiling, but there was a shadow of concern on his face. Our texts weren’t actually reassuring, Javier had to admit to himself.

_At what time do u finish at the working site?_

_1 pm, why?_

_Can u come 2 the club? Asap?_

_Javi, what’s happening?_

_Nothing bad, just COME!_

“So, Javi, what’s the matter?”

Javier took him by the arm and pulled him in a corner of the club’s hallway. “I talked to you about Lazy Nick, didn’t I?” he started.

“The guy always complaining when you train in the evening because he has to resurface the ice afterwards?”

“Him. Well, he suddenly quit. And the Cricket Club has no handyman. Out of the blue, without notice, with the Grand Prix Final just around the corner.”

“Oh.” Yuzuru kept silent for a few moments, taking in the news and its implications; then he looked at Javier, his eyes wide open and incredulous. “You mean that I…” he stuttered, “ that you…”

“Yes.” Javier nodded. “I talked about you to Brian, I told him that you are so good at everything and that you need a job and that you’re reliable. So he talked to the manag...”

“Javi, I’m not _reliable_!” Yuzuru put his hands on his cheeks and shook his head. “ _You_ trust me, but from the club’s point of view… I have no CV, I have no _documents_! Only a fake passport.”

Javier shrugged. “I don’t think that the club managers can tell the difference between a fake and a real passport.”

“But it’s not fair, it’s…”

“Look, I don’t like to lie to Brian, Tracey, or anybody else. Now you have an address, though; if you had a job too, you could ask for _real_ documents, so we wouldn’t tell lies for too long. We just need some time to get things right.”

Yuzuru didn’t speak, just tucked his hair behind his ears once, twice, three times. “Javi,” he called finally, “why do you do so much for me?”

Javier elbowed him. “Because you’re my friend, _estúpido_.”

Yuzuru was staring into the void in front of him, tormenting his lower lip with thumb and forefinger, and a sudden thought came to Javier’s mind, freezing him.

“Oh my God, Yuzu, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry… it was such a coincidence, the Cricket Club offering a job, you looking for a job, that it kind of… blinded me, and I didn’t think about what I was offering.” Yuzuru looked at him, and Javier’s heart started beating wildly, his throat constricting. “You were a student, you would still be a student if… you are smart, cultivated, and I… I’m offering you to clean the club’s locker rooms. I don’t know how to apolo…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, because Yuzu had thrown his arms around his neck and was holding him so tight that Javier was breathless.

“Thank you,” Yuzu said. “You don’t know, you can’t understand what it means to me, working at the Cricket Club. Thank you, thank you.”

Javier was so relieved that he realized his legs wouldn’t hold him up, so he tightened his arms around Yuzu’s waist and pressed his chin on Yuzu’s shoulder. Thank God, he had done the right thing. What he felt, though, wasn’t only relief. Being like this, wrapped in Yuzu’s arms, breathing his amber scent and touching his silky hair, felt like… happiness.

“Actually, I’m afraid I told another lie,” Javier confessed without lifting his chin from Yuzu’s shoulder.

“Uh?”

“I said that in Japan you skated, and that you can drive the Zamboni.”

“It’s not a lie.”

Javier stepped back and took Yuzu by the shoulders, so that he could look into his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Yuzu blinked a couple of times. “It’s true, I skated,” he said. “I was quite good, too. But then my asthma got worse, and then… then, there was the earthquake.” He lifted his chin, in a defensive attitude. “So yes, I can drive the Zamboni.” He smiled shyly. “I’ve always loved to resurface the ice.”

Javier left Yuzu’s shoulders, his stomach clenching. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, hoping not to have an accusing tone.

Yuzu sighed. “It’s so hard for me to talk about my past,” he said, “you know. But talking about skating would mean… would mean talking about my old dreams. And about my sister, because she was the first one who started skating, and… I’m sure, I _know_ that I was going to tell you, one day. It’s just that I wasn’t ready. It’s… it hurts so much, it’s like having a tiger tearing me apart from inside. Tigers are so beautiful, aren’t they? But… but if I set mine free, I fear I will be killed.”

For a moment, they didn’t say anything.

“Oh, Yuzu,” Javier said finally. “You’re right, I know how you feel about your past. I should have known better.”

“No. It’s me who should have found the courage to talk about it, at least to you. I’m sorry.”

“No, _I_ am sorry.”

“No, I.”

“No, I.”

“ _Baka_.”

“ _Estúpido_.”

They burst into laughter.

“Come on,” Javier said then, “now show your best lost puppy eyes and come talk to the big boss.”

Yuzuru ran his hands on his cheeks, then put up an irresistible, sweet, childish face that, in comparison, Puss in Boots in _Shrek 2_ was an absolute beginner. “Like that?” he asked.

“Exactly.” Javier took him by the hand, smiling. “Let’s go.”

Beyond the huge windows separating the cafeteria from the rink, the skating class for adult beginners had just begun. At the edge of the ice, Yuzu was checking that the tissue-boxes were all full, and filling the empty ones.

“Gosh, I’m dead tired!”

Yuzu walked out of the rink, walked in a minute later carrying an ice bucket.

“Yep! Today Brian sounded like the evil sergeant training the recruits in an American movie.”

Yuzu was picking up all the things forgotten around the rink: scarves, gloves, even bags.

“Holy fuck, the new handyman is _gorgeous_!”

“Where were they hiding him? Everyone here knows I’ve been single for _centuries_!”

Yuzu was leaving the rink, his arms loaded with forgotten items.

“Hey, Javi, is he single?”

Yuzu pushed a lock of hair away from his forehead with his elbow.

“Javi?”

“Javiii.”

“So into him, man? Okay, message understood.”

“Mhm?” Javi took his eyes off of Yuzu and saw someone walking away, then he immediately turned back to the rink: Yuzu was nowhere to be seen. Was he _into_ Yuzu?

Yes. Of course he was.

“Oh, fuck,” Javier exhaled, leaning back and pressing his palms on his eyes.

Beside the empty rink, in the silence of the evening, the Zamboni looked not only huge, but slightly aggressive. A kind of stegosaurus: impressive – then, the brontosaurus was herbivorous, the T-rex was carnivore, but the stegosaurus? God knew.

“Ready?” Javier asked Yuzu.

“I’ve been ready for _ages_ ,” Yuzu chuckled, “it’s you who thinks I’m not.”

“I just think, when was the last time you drove a Zamboni? Four years ago? Maybe you are a bit… rusty, aren’t you? Instead I drove the Zamboni only four _weeks_ ago.”

“Driving the Zamboni is like riding a bicycle: once you learn, it is forever.”

“You can’t ride a bicycle.”

“That’s not the point.” Yuzu crossed his arms on his chest, pouting.

Javier smiled. “Then we’ll drive it together, okay?” he said, handing the Zamboni key to him. “Let’s go, Eddie Merckx.”

“Eddie who?”

“Come on!”

Yuzu took the key, climbed easily on the Zamboni and sat behind the wheel. For a few seconds he just looked around, running his hand on the controls with quite reverential gestures. It wasn’t the first time, in the few hours since Yuzu worked at the club, that Javier saw love and emotion on his face: how much had he missed the ice? Javier didn’t dare to ask that question. Meanwhile, Yuzu had braced himself and inserted the key in the ignition. Before turning the Zamboni on, he looked down at Javier.

“There’s no place for two,” he said, a corner of his mouth raised in a smirk of challenge.

“Sure?”

“One hundred per cent.”

“Wait and see!”

Javier climbed on the Zamboni and, ignoring Yuzu’s protests and his hand trying to stop him, sat behind the wheel, forcing Yuzu to sit in his lap.

“Not fair,” Yuzu muttered. “I surrender to brutality and prevarication, but…”

“Shut up and focus on driving,” Javier interrupted him.

And Yuzu obliged: he shut up and turned the key. The Zamboni came immediately alive, buzzing calmly.

Javier leaned forward, his mouth close to Yuzu’s ear. “Shall we go?” he asked.

Yuzu nodded, and the Zamboni started to move. Maybe he’s right, Javier thought, it’s like riding a bicycle: once you learn, it is forever. As if he had been on a Zamboni just yesterday, Yuzu drove into the rink and began the first loop along the edge of the ice.

Until the end of it, Javier watched over the process, keeping an eye now on Yuzu, now on the new ice that was magically appearing in their wake, but then he gave in to the pleasure of the ride. The low, caressing buzz of the engine, the gentle lights painting the rink in pale, warm yellow. The rough, opaque ice in front of them, the smooth, shining ice behind them. Yuzu’s back against his chest. The scent of Yuzu’s skin. The itching Yuzu’s hair gave his face, when Javier leaned forward.

_So into him, man?_ had said someone Javier hadn’t even seen. Was it really like that? Did he like Yuzuru _that_ way? He had always liked women… _Can’t you like a man, for once in your life?_ Steve’s voice repeated in his mind. _Maybe this boy is so special, no matter what gender he is._ No matter? Well, of course. Generally speaking, it didn’t matter if the one you liked was male, female, whatever. Speaking about himself, though, Javier wasn’t sure that he was ready to accept that he liked a man… or he was?

“Olé,” Yuzuru said.

The rink was ready, the ice perfect, and the Zamboni was peacefully sliding out of it.

“Alright,” Javier sighed, “I have to humbly apologize. You’re great, you didn’t need me here to keep an eye on you.”

“So tomorrow you won’t stay here until eight and a half to watch over me? You will go home and cook?” Yuzuru asked while parking the Zamboni, a mocking note in his voice.

“ _Paella_ with fish to make up for it. How does it sound?”

“It sounds perfect.”

Yuzuru stopped the engine, sighing deeply.

“Actually I’m glad you waited for me,” he said. He turned to Javier; his eyes were so close. “I liked that you stayed with me.” That mocking note was gone, and Yuzu’s voice sounded only soft. “You made me feel calmer, and more sure.” His mouth too was so close.

“And I’m glad I waited for you.” Javier felt Yuzu’s warm, fruity breath on his own mouth. Their noses were nearly touching, their bodies were pressed together on the tiny seat of the Zamboni. Javier leaned slightly in. Was it what he wanted? Yes. Yuzu sat still, as if he couldn’t find the courage to fill the small gap between them, or to make it wider. What if he was thinking that Javi was like all the others, in the end? Like all the men who had given him a bed for one night, or some money, and in exchange had asked for… Javier pulled back, as less sharply as he could.

“I’m starving,” he said, trying to sound and look relaxed. “Shall we go home?” He disentangled himself from the Zamboni’s seat.

Yuzuru ran a hand on his face, as if he wanted to chase away what had just happened.

“Sure,” he finally said. “I’m hungry too.”

Javier climbed down off the Zamboni. “Oh, no no no!” he said. “We _must_ celebrate. Let’s go to a nice restaurant, what do you think?”

From above, Yuzu raised his eyebrows. “To that fine Japanese restaurant where we’ve been a couple of weeks ago?”

“Deal! And _you_ are paying, because _I know_ they gave you an advance on your first salary.”

Yuzu climbed down off the Zamboni, a happy smile on his face. “I can’t hide anything from you,” he exclaimed. “Okay, I’m paying. Sashimi, here I come!”

They left the rink talking lively, and Javier thanked all the saints in heaven that between Yuzu and him everything was easy and funny again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I have no idea about what you need to drive a Zamboni, but I absolutely wanted Yuzu to drive it, so what can I say? I trust in you and in your suspension of disbelief... thank you :))))


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuzuru wanted to kiss him. In that exact moment, in front of Javi’s mirth and satisfaction, that’s what Yuzuru longed to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...be ready for a very long chapter :)

Driving the Zamboni was the moment of his working day that he loved most. He liked everything he did at the Cricket Club, even cleaning inside the lockers: spending the whole day so close to the ice, being around skaters, coaches, and people who appreciated his work and thought highly of him – it was so much more than he could have ever hoped, and deserved. Driving the Zamboni, though, especially between 8.15 pm, when the café closed, and 8.30, when the cleaning staff arrived: then he was alone. Totally alone with the ice, the buzz of the Zamboni and his memories – blooming into his mind, vividly but not too painfully, and all so beautiful.

“Good night, Yuzu!” Max the barman said from afar.

“Good night!” Yuzuru said back. He was alone now.

The warm-up, boring and necessary, that Nanami Abe-sensei ordered him to do every single day and that he did begrudgingly, his legs eager to jump. The awareness, so strong and _physical_ even as he was still turning in the air, that he was going to land a clean, beautiful quad Toe loop; the struggle to skate until the end of his new free on Craig Armstrong’s music, his lungs burning and constricting a bit more after each step, each jump and spin. The bright perspective he was going to train with Brian Orser and Javier Fernández at the Toronto Cricket Club, one day – and the fear he would never make it, in his worst moments. And the earthquake, him running and stumbling on the blades of his skates, toward a home that didn’t exist anymore…

Now he had a home, though. Now he met Brian Orser and Javier Fernández every day, although they were not his coach and his training mate. Brian was his boss, and Javi was… who was he?

The ice was alright now, smooth and shining, calm and pearly like the sea – alive like the sea. Yuzuru drove the Zamboni out of the rink.

Javi was his savior. His housemate. His friend, the only one. Javi was the most important person in his life, now: unavoidably. But was he important “only” because of that? Yuzuru was neither stupid, nor deluded so much to deny there was something else. Okay, _much_ else.

He climbed down and stood by the Zamboni for a moment, just looking at it. And thinking about his first ride on it, with Javi. All the time, Yuzuru had been aware of every inch of Javi’s body pressed against his, of Javi’s breath on his neck and ear, of Javi’s scent. He had had the feeling that Javi was going to kiss him, and he had waited, _longed_ for that kiss… but Javi had pulled back. Or maybe Javi had never leaned in? Maybe Yuzuru had just imagined that his dream was coming true? He didn’t know much about flirting, desire, love. In his old life, from childhood through puberty to his teenage years, there had been asthma, skating, and nothing else; then, because of the earthquake _love_ had become just another way to name the pain he felt for his dead family and friends, and desire was a trading good: something hateful, repulsive even, but useful, valuable.

Now, there was Javi.

Yuzuru touched the ice to thank it and say goodbye until tomorrow. God, how he wished he could skate… it was the only downside of his job at the club: being close to a rink for so many hours a day had turned what for three and a half years had been nostalgia into need. He didn’t just miss skating, he didn’t just want to skate; he _needed_ to skate. Javi kept his old skates in his locker, which he regularly forgot to close. Javi and him wore the same shoe size. And exactly that day was the 7th of December, Yuzuru’s birthday, and he could give himself a kind of present… no. Yuzuru hadn’t told everything about his past to Javi, but he had never really _lied_. If he skated, though, he would plainly deceive Javi. And he wanted to never deceive Javi. Never.

His hands were aching, cold as they were after being in touch with the ice for so long. Yuzuru wiped them on his jeans and straightened up, sighing; then he retrieved his quilted jacket, greeted the cleaning people, who had just arrived, and left the club, walking to the bus stop. He took out of his pocket the old phone that Javi had given him and checked the time: 8.35. Okay, there was a bus at 8.39, he would be home at…

“Oh, look who’s showing up.”

Yuzuru stopped in his tracks.

“Hi, Blade… but I guess all those posers at your posh club don’t call you like that, mhm?”

Yuzuru turned around. “Hi, Skinny,” he said with a low, resigned tone.

Skinny looked exactly the same as ever: pencil-thin, dirty, with hungry eyes. Being aware of how much _he_ had changed, instead, made Yuzuru feel deeply guilty. _I’m not better than you_ , he thought, _and yet_.

“So, Blade, how are you doing?” Skinny chuckled. “Oh, I’m sorry, stupid question. It’s obvious that you’re doing fine. Spectacular, I would say.”

Was it just a statement, an innocent joke or the beginning of a threat? “I’ve been spectacularly lucky, yes,” Yuzuru admitted, with the most neutral tone he could find.

“That’s true,” Skinny said. “And everything started thanks to me, didn’t it? If I didn’t steal that guy’s watch, you wouldn’t do so fucking _spectacular_.”

Yuzuru kept silent, waiting for the predictable following.

“So I guess you owe me something, mhm?” Skinny went on, sure enough. “And look, I’m right here, in front of you! Why don’t you pay your debt now?”

The bus pulled up, some passengers got off, the bus drove away. Without saying a word, Yuzuru rummaged in his pockets, searching for all the money he could find, then unceremoniously slapped notes and coins in Skinny’s extended palm. Skinny counted quickly, the look on his face turning from greedy into disappointed.

“Fourteen dollars and fifty-eight cents?” he said. “That’s all?”

“If it’s not okay for you, I can take my money back.”

Skinny tucked notes and coins into his jeans pocket. “Well, let’s say I consider it a deposit. And tomorrow you bring me more. And the day after tomorrow, even more. Right?”

Yuzuru crossed his arms on his chest, tilted his head to one side. “Are you trying to blackmail me, Skinny?”

“Oh, don’t be so…”

“Because you’re not considering a simple detail: when you blackmail someone, you need to know something compromising about them. What do you know about me that we can describe as _compromising_?”

Skinny smirked. “I’m sure that your dear Spaniard wouldn’t be so happy to know how you earned your…”

“He knows,” Yuzuru interrupted him. “Anything else?” He dropped his arms. “Look, Skinny: it’s true, I’ve been very lucky. If I can help you, I will. In that _posh club_ I’m just a handyman, I don’t earn so much, so don’t you think that I’ll pay for your junk. And if you’ll ask for too much,” Yuzuru stepped closer to Skinny, “if you’ll go too far… remember that I’m still Blade, and there’s a reason if I earned myself that name. You heard me.”

Skinny tried to hold Yuzuru’s gaze, but didn’t succeed: he looked away, mumbled something that could be _Fine_ or _Fuck you_ and walked away, as fast as his scarce stamina allowed him.

Yuzuru chose not to waste time watching Skinny go away and started to walk to the next bus stop: he didn’t want to wait for the bus there, where Skinny could come back. And maybe it was better to start carrying his sack always with him again… God, he would never be able to leave Blade behind, to… the ring of an incoming text caught his attention. He fished the phone out of his pocket.

_Since u didn’t write u took the bus at 8.39, & since I’m a genius, I’ve wittily thought that u will take the bus at 8.50 and be home between 9.19 & 9.23, depending on how fast u walk. Can I humbly ask u 2 try and b here at 9.19? I’m HUNGRY!_

Yuzuru smiled, his previous discouragement blinded by Javi’s radiant words.

_Yes, Sherlock_ , he typed. _I’ll b home at 9.19, so that u, noble genius, can eat. Ok?_

_Yeeeeeees!!!_ , Javi wrote instantly, _before I bite into Effie’s food_.

Yuzuru’s smile widened, and he sped up toward the bus stop.

Yuzuru opened the door and found a completely dark apartment. Weird. Just a minute ago, when he got to the building, the windows were lit up…

The lights turned on all at once.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

In front of Yuzuru there was a table laden with food and drinks, a bottle in a bucket full of ice cubes, a packet with a big red bow, Effie with a yellow bow around her neck, and a smiling Javi. The only reaction Yuzuru was capable of, was losing all ability to salivate. Javi turned immediately serious.

“Oh God, maybe it’s _not_ your birthday,” he said. “But when you gave your passport for the letter of employment, I took a quick look and read that today was your birthday… and I thought it was probably true, even though the passport is fake, so… okay, I was wrong, but we can celebrate regardless, if…”

“You were right,” Yuzuru interrupted him, his mouth dry. “I was born on the 7th of December 1994. It _is_ my birthday.”

Javi smiled again, more shining than before. He walked around the table and trotted to Yuzuru.

“Happy birthday, Yuzu,” he said again, ruffling his hair.

“So, when you left the club, you went to buy a present for me,” Yuzuru said, his mouth parched and his limbs so numb he couldn’t move.

“Oh no, I bought you a present some time ago. It was hidden in my wardrobe.” Javi was spreading pride all around like rays of sunlight, and Yuzuru felt his heart melt like caramel.

“Then you cooked,” he choked out.

“All Japanese food.”

“And you bought champagne.”

“No, just spumante. Real Italian spumante, though. I also bought some decorations, but I had no time to put them around the flat. Okay, hold on.” Javi ran to his bedroom, then came back with a party blower between his lips. He blew. The blower unrolled with a loud raspberry. “Happy birthday!” Javi said again.

Maybe thanks to the raspberry, Yuzuru felt a spark of excitement and energy ignite his whole body. He ran to Javi and hugged him. “Thank you soooo much!” Then he rushed to the table. “What did you cook? What? What?”

“Aaaaah, not yet!” Javi shook his head. “First of all, there’s a nice, warm bath waiting for you. Meanwhile, I’ll finish cooking, so that we can eat and drink and so on. Yes?”

Yuzuru wanted to kiss him. In that exact moment, in front of Javi’s mirth and satisfaction, that’s what Yuzuru _longed_ to do. Kissing him. Peppering his whole face with small pecks, then kissing his lips breathlessly, endlessly.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m going.”

“Good.”

“Javi…” Yuzuru grinned. He couldn’t see himself, but from the way some muscles on his face were stretching and aching, he could tell that it was a very long time that he didn’t grin with so much gratitude and joy. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Yuzuru walked quickly to the bathroom.

If he hadn’t forgotten the last time he had had so much fun, Yuzuru would have been probably overwhelmed by his birthday party. If he hadn’t been in a place he could call home. If he hadn’t been with Javi.

But he _had_ forgotten the last time he had had so much fun, and he _was_ in a place he could call home, and he _was_ with Javi, and he had no intention at all to be overwhelmed: he wanted to enjoy until the last drop of happiness.

They ate, and talked, and toasted, and laughed, and Yuzuru would have never stopped, and they didn’t stop, miraculously: they kept eating talking toasting laughing, at their home, Javi and him.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Nope.”

“Yeeees.”

“Oh, come on! How can you say that Spanglish songs are better than K-pop?”

“Excuse me?? In summer, only Spanglish songs can be heard on…”

“That’s what you believe because you have an Eurocentric vision of the world. In Asia…”

“Nuuuu, I’m objective, not Eurocentric.”

“I refuse to think even for a second that you can like Enrique Iglesias.”

“Okay, okay, I don’t like him. But what about Jennifer Lopez? Mhm? _Let’s get loud, let’s get loud_ …”

“Wanna bet that it’s not her music, what you like about JLo?”

“Well, you’re right. Shakira! What about Shakira, then?”

“If we’re talking about _that_ Shakira, she doesn’t look so bad either, does she?”

“She’s a good singer, though. What was that song again? _Whenever, wherever_ … there were pan flutes, in that song. And she was dancing kind of a belly dance… it was an amazing example of different styles melting together in a…”

“Oh, come on! Looks like the only thing _melting_ , here, is your brain, Javi!”

They burst into a loud laugh; even too loud, for such an unexceptional joke. Well, they had spumante – a bit too much for someone who never drank, like Yuzuru, and for someone who was about to leave for an important competition, like Javi – and all those sparkling bubbles were now working hard through their whole bodies and minds. Anyway, Javi turned suddenly serious.

“The cake!” he screamed, jumping on his feet with a look of sheer panic on his face. “I took it out of the fridge ages ago… _that_ will be more than melted, by now!” He rushed to the kitchen and started fidgeting with something Yuzuru couldn’t see, hidden behind the small wall that divided the living room from the kitchenette. “Thank God, it’s still okay!” Javi sighed. “Yuzu, would you mind turning the light off?”

Did it mean that Javi had thought about the candles too? With his heart hammering, Yuzuru stood up and went to turn the light off. The apartment fell into darkness, but only for a moment: some small candles flickered alive, lightening a huge strawberry shortcake and Javi’s face with their warm, trembling glow. He was so beautiful. With the cake in his hands, Javi came out from behind the wall and walked cautiously to the table.

“Happy birthday to youuuuu,” he sang, “happy birthday to youuuu, happy birthday dear Yuuuzuuu,” he put the cake down on the table, “happy birthday tooo youuuu.”

Yuzuru closed his eyes. He didn’t need to count the candles to know they were twenty. And he had to make a wish. Which one? Some wishes could never come true: his family to be alive. Some were too complicated: skating. So what? Yuzuru made a wish. Which might never come true and was complicated for sure, but just as strong as the other two. He blew on the candles, and a complete darkness enveloped them again.

Javi clapped his hands. “Well done!” he exclaimed, then turned the light on. Yuzuru opened his eyes: in front of him there was Javi’s caring gaze and smile. “Come on, I’ll give you a huge slice of the cake, okay?” He took a knife. “So, did you make a wish?”

“Well, I…” Yuzuru stuttered, feeling his cheeks getting hot. He couldn’t say that yes, he had, and that his wish concerned Javi.

“Oh, sorry,” Javi said, with a mortified tone. “I’m so sorry, of course your wish has to do with your family.”

“No, Javi, don’t…”

“But I know a way to cheer you up!” Javi reached for the packet with the red bow. “Ta-daaa! My present for your birthday!” He handed it to Yuzuru.

“Hey, thank you!” Yuzuru took it. Funny, his hands were trembling. He unwrapped the packet meticulously, almost religiously: bow, tape, paper, without tearing or breaking anything. And he found a Winnie the Pooh tissue-box in his lap.

“I noticed that you sniff quite often, when you’re at the rink.” Now Yuzuru was inevitably overwhelmed, and Javi’s voice sounded somehow muffled to his ears, as if it came from a dream. “And the first things you bought for your room was the novel _Winnie the Pooh_ and a plush of Winnie the Pooh, so…”

“I had a tissue-box just like this,” Yuzuru whispered, running a finger on the bear’s mouth. That smiling mouth had always given him comfort, and a sense of confidence. “But… well, I lost it in the earthquake, of course.”

His old tissue-box was buried under the ruins of the Sendai rink, together with Nanami Abe-sensei. Together with what, at that time, was Yuzuru’s present and his hopes for the future. Yuzuru felt two big, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, saw them dropping on Pooh’s head.

Javi ran to him, crouched at his side. “Hey, hey”, he said softly. “Don’t cry.” Javi put a hand on his nape; Yuzuru felt Javi’s warm fingers and palm massaging his skin. “You’ll make it, Yuzu. You _are_ making it. You are so brave, so strong. You…”

Javi couldn’t talk anymore, because Yuzuru had thrown himself into his arms and pressed his face in the crook of his neck.

“I’m so happy that I found Pooh again,” he said. “And I’m so happy it was you to bring him back to me.”

“I’m happy too, then,” Javi whispered, wrapping his arms around Yuzuru’s waist.

They stayed like that for a while, Winnie the Pooh squeezed between their bodies and Effie meowing at their feet. Then Yuzuru lifted his face. Javi’s was so close, his mouth just a breath away, and Yuzuru couldn’t resist, didn’t want to: he touched Javi’s lips with his own, only the shadow of a kiss.

“This is the wish I made,” he said.

Javi didn’t look surprised, puzzled or annoyed. He ran his thumb on Yuzuru’s lower lip, his eyes glowing as warmly as the flames in a fireplace. “And this is the hope I had,” he whispered. Then his lips meet Yuzuru’s again.

Javi’s mouth tasted of spumante, tasted of everything that was good in the world. Yuzuru felt Javi’s soft tongue around his own, Javi’s nose making his tickle lightly. Their hearts were pressed together, beating fast.

They kissed for seconds, minutes, hours maybe, the clock’s needles going round and round. When they stopped, they pulled away just enough to look at each other. Javi smiled.

“You know?” he said. “It’s the first time in my whole life that I kiss a man. It’s a little bit like… like it’s my first kiss, somehow.”

Yuzuru smiled in his turn, the air swirling with happiness in his lungs. “Well, it’s my first kiss with someone I like,” he said.

Javi turned serious. “Really?”

“Really,” Yuzuru chuckled. “Actually, it’s quite a weird feeling.”

“Weird but beautiful, I hope?”

Javi was slowly massaging the small of his back; Yuzuru rubbed his nose against Javi’s. “Very beautiful,” he confirmed. “I like you, and I like to kiss you.”

“Very good.”

“What about you? Do you like to kiss a man?”

“Mhm…” Javi looked up, as if he was thinking about it. “You know what? I’m not sure.” He smirked. “I think I should try again.” He sank his hands into Yuzuru’s hair and kissed him again.

Yuzuru kissed Javi back, and it was true: he was twenty and had slept with several men and women, but those kisses – yeah, those kisses were his first kisses.

Yuzuru lifted his eyelids. The darkness beyond the window was smeared with the light of a street lamp. Window? His room had no window. A weight around his waist, someone breathing on his nape. Javi. He was in Javi’s bed. Yuzuru reached for Javi’s hand on his own belly, threaded their fingers and lowered his eyelids.

He was so thirsty. Yuzuru looked at the sky outside: it was still dark. What time was it? He rolled slowly on his other hip. Javi was sleeping on his back, with Effie curled up against his left shoulder. Yuzuru smiled. The small clock on the nightstand flashed 4.27. Yuzuru stood carefully up, tiptoed to the kitchen, drank a big glass of water, then tiptoed back to the bedroom. Maybe it was better if we went to sleep in his bed… it had been beautiful, kissing after dinner, and while they were clearing the table and doing the dishes, and finally on Javi’s bed, where they had fallen asleep. It had been so beautiful that Yuzuru felt a glowing, hot nucleus inside his chest radiate warmth throughout his body, but maybe it was better not to push things too much, wasn’t it?

“What are you doing?” Javi’s sleepy voice asked him.

“I was thirsty, I drank a glass of water. Do you want some?”

“No, thanks.” His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and now Yuzuru could see Javi propped up on an elbow, looking at him. “Come on, come back here. It’s so early.” Javi reached out for him. Yuzuru walked happily to the bed and lay at Javi’s side, that hot nucleus inside him bubbling and flickering. Javi pulled Yuzuru against him, sighed contentedly and fell instantly asleep; Effie meowed, annoyed, and jumped down off the bed, walking to her pillow.

Yuzuru pressed his forehead against Javi’s breastbone, breathed in Javi’s scent, and peacefully closed his eyes.

Now Javi was sleeping on his front, with Effie curled up on the pillow beside him, where the print left by Yuzuru’s head was still visible. Yuzuru walked into the room and sat silently on the bed, close to Javi.

“Hey,” he called.

Nothing.

“Javi,” he tried again, running a hand through Javier’s hair, short but curling a bit on his nape and forehead. Javi grunted, and Yuzuru leaned down to kiss him on a temple. “I must go to work,” Yuzuru said, “and you leave in a few hours. Don’t you want to say good-bye?”

Javi grunted again, but in the end he rolled on his back and blinked. “Why do you have to work in the middle of the night? This is slavery.”

“This is eight o’clock in the morning. And you have to take a flight to Barcelona at noon.”

“Oh God, you’re right.” Javi rubbed his eyes with his fists closed. Like a child, Yuzuru thought, and smiled. He felt like laughing, playing, blowing raspberries on Javi’s tummy. “So I should get up, shouldn’t I?” Javi asked.

“You should, yes. The coffee machine is ready, you just need to switch it on.” Yuzuru was about to get up, but Javi stopped him by putting a hand on his hip.

“Please, wait,” Javi said. Yuzuru sat back down, and Javi sat up. “So we won’t meet until the end of December,” he said.

Yuzuru felt his heart quake. “Yes. But you’ll be with your family for Christmas, and you’ll enjo…”

“What about you?” Javi caressed Yuzuru’s arm. “I don’t like you to be alone at Christmas.”

I already spent three Christmases alone, Yuzuru thought, I’m used to. He gave Javier a smile, hopefully not too wistful. “I won’t be alone,” he said. “I will help at the Cricket’s Christmas lunch for the club members, then I will spend some quality time with Effie in my beautiful room. I will be fine.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.” And he was, Yuzuru found out in that moment.

“Okay.” Javi’s hand ran up along Yuzuru’s arm, caressed his shoulder and neck, his lips. “If I brush my teeth right now, can I say a proper good-bye?” he asked.

Yuzuru felt butterflies – and birds, and candles, and breeze – flitting around in his stomach. “So now you’re sure?” he teased. “You like kissing a man?”

Javi didn’t stop caressing his skin. “You know,” he said, “I always liked women. Always. So you would think that it should be hard, for someone like me, to… accept that I like a man.” Javi shook his head. “But it wasn’t. I don’t know why. It felt, it feels… natural. Right.”

“Well, after saying something like that, you can surely say a proper good-bye even without brushing your teeth,” Yuzuru said, his previous teasing tone turning into warmth. “I don’t know what is like, to kiss someone I care about in the morning, after sleeping in the same bed.”

Javi smiled tenderly. “What if I stink too much?” he asked, but he was leaning in already.

Yuzuru leaned in as well. “It will be _your_ stink,” he whispered.

They kissed, and it didn’t stink at all. It smelled of intimacy, trust, and home. Javi, though, pulled back too soon.

“What’s wrong?” Yuzuru asked, puzzled.

“Nothing, it’s just…” Javi stroked Yuzu’s cheek with the back of his hand. “There’s something I want to make very clear,” he said. “I don’t want you to think that I… that I take advantage of you because… well, because I gave you a room, and… I mean, I don’t want you to feel that you _have_ to kiss me, or…”

“Javi.”

“Mhm?”

“In a few minutes I must go to work.” Yuzuru grabbed Javi’s hand, kissed his knuckles. “Why don’t you stop saying bullshit and kiss me again?”

Javi made a sound that was half a laugh, half a sigh of relief; then kissed him again.

*****

“ _Baka_.”

“She’s losing weight, I tell you.”

“You don’t see her since two days, how can you..”

“I can. And she’s probably _starving_.”

“Wait, I let you see her again. Effie!” Yuzuru stood up from the table, took his phone and went to search for Effie. He found her on the sofa and smiled: that cat spent her life sleeping, eating, or sleeping close to where some human was eating. “Okay, look at her,” he said, framing Effie with his phone camera. “Are you sure she’s _starving_?”

“Well, maybe not, okay,” Javi said with a smile in his voice. “Let’s say she’s a bit gaunt.”

“ _Baka_.”

“You already said it once.”

“Then I’ll say it once again, so we’ll get the perfect number. _Baka_.”

Yuzuru walked back to the table and put his phone against the tea pot. As soon as their eyes met, Javi and him smiled.

“So you train at three?” Yuzuru asked.

“Yes. Open practice, again.”

“Well… it’s normal, isn’t it? Many practices are open, at any competition.”

“Yes. But…” Javi rubbed his nape; he looked confused. “It’s the first time that I take part in an international competition in my country. People will come to see _me_ , to cheer for me, and… well, it won’t be easy to skate in front of all those Spaniards. It’s like… like having a heavier burden on my shoulders.”

“The burden of responsibility?”

“Probably.”

Yuzuru wanted to caress Javi’s hair, or kiss his forehead: a comforting, almost paternal gesture.

“I can understand,” he said. “You don’t compete only for you or your family. As an international athlete, you always compete for your country too. But I guess it’s quite different, to compete abroad, far from anyone speaking your language and sharing your culture, than to compete at home. Winning is not only your dream, isn’t it? It’s your people’s dream, and you are… doomed to make it come true.”

“Yeah,” Javi nodded. “You expressed perfectly what I feel.” A shiver visibly ran through Javi’s body. “And what I fear, too.”

“But you know what?” Yuzuru pressed on. “I think that all the people who will be at the rink, in Barcelona… they don’t want you to win. I mean, yes, of course they want you to win. But most of all, they want to be proud of you. They want to tell the world: See? That’s our champion; he’s Spanish, and he’s a great skater and a great person. And you are, Javi: a great skater and a great person.” Yuzuru put a finger on his phone screen, trying to touch Javi’s face, somehow. Javi leaned a bit forward, as if to allow Yuzuru’s fingertip to reach him. “It won’t be easy, Javi, but if you give your best and you compete fairly… and of course you will do it… then, Spain will be proud of you, and happy.”

Javi’s face looked less somber than before. “I hope you’re right, Yuzu,” he said.

“I am right. You will skate beautifully, and that burden will turn in a thousand arms carrying you in triumph. I believe in you, you should believe in yourself too.”

Now Javi looked relieved, and his eyes were warmer than ever. “Yuzu, did you take some kind of… class, to learn how to always say the right thing at the right moment?”

“Better, I _graduated_ in Right-thing-at-the-right-momentology,” Yuzuru said, smiling and rubbing his fingertip on Javi’s nose through the screen.

Despite being almost hidden by Yuzu’s finger, on Javi’s face there was a soft look now. “When you smile, you have a dimple on your right cheek,” Javi said, pressing his finger against Yuzuru’s, like there was only a thin, transparent glass between them. “I wish… I wish I could touch it.”

Like warm milk and honey pouring down on his heart. “When you come back, you can do it,” Yuzuru whispered.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

They both lowered their fingers, and just their gazes melted for a while.

“Talking about skating,” Javi said afterwards, “I was wondering… you love ice skating. You skated, that’s what you told me. Now that you’re working at the Cricket Club, don’t you… don’t you ever feel like trying? Like skating again?”

No, he didn’t _feel like_. He _needed_ to skate. Ferociously.

“Yes,” Yuzuru admitted.

“So why don’t you do it? You could take some adult class. Or just put on my old skates and skate. They’re in my locker, and we have the same shoe size, don’t we? You should skate before resurfacing the ice, or… why not, Yuzu?”

Skating. Before resurfacing the ice.

“I don’t know, Javi,” Yuzuru said, managing to sound natural. “I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think about it, do it,” Javi said back. “So we can skate together.”

Skating. Before resurfacing the ice.

“Okay,” Yuzuru cut short. “Look, I need to go now. Got to get a move on, otherwise…”

“Yeah, me too.” Javi was looking at him again with that soft look all over his face. “Have a good day, Yuzu.”

Yuzuru smiled, the usual butterflies and birds and candles and breeze flickering in his stomach. “Good day, Javi.”

Skating. Before resurfacing the ice.

Don’t think about it.

_Do it_.

****

“Bye, Yuzu! See you.”

“Bye, Max!”

Yuzuru watched the barman walk away. In fifteen minutes the cleaning staff would arrive. Three persons busy with dance and locker rooms, offices, restrooms, and very rarely looking at the Zamboni driver. They would have hardly recognized him, assuming that they noticed him.

So?

Yuzuru sat on a bench at the edge of the rink. What was going to happen to him, if he skated?

Of course he was out of shape, and that would make him feel down, regretful of what he had lost, but also eager to put Javi’s skates on again, and again, and again – and he would lose any balance that he had slowly, hardly gotten. Now he had a home, a cat, he had Javi: was he ready to lose everything in the name of… what? In the name of a boy named Yuzuru Hanyu, whom he had chosen to let die, together with his family and his dreams?

Yuzuru heard the cleaning guys get into the club.

Sooner or later, someone would find him out. Sooner or later, he would have to choose who he could, or wanted to be.

Javi’s skates were near him, under the bench.

Better to give up.

Yuzuru took off his shoes, put on Javi’s skates. He didn’t remember how uncomfortable they were. But they fit him. He laced them. Pulled the skate covers over them. Wore the old gloves he had kept in his sack for three years and a half, together with the training gear he wore the day of the earthquake. He stood up, and didn’t swing on the blades. Well, it was something. He bent down and touched the ice. An even too strong emotion – fear? – was constricting his throat. He put his feet on the ice.

One loop was enough to understand: since the moment Javi had told him to skate again, or maybe since he had arrived in Toronto, for him there had never been any other possible choice.

*****

The cold was slowly seeping throughout his whole body, in stark contrast with the warmth of his perspiration, condensing like a fog all around him. Yuzuru sat still on the ice, his legs crossed and his eyes closed, waiting for his breathing to come back to normal. He had to better visualize each movement, if he wanted to skate decently. During the fifteen evenings he had spent at the rink, he had got used to the skates and gained a good balance; all the exercises he had learned watching Tracey Wilson’s classes were helping him to deepen his edges and get better transitions and skills, but the path in front of him was still long.

Yuzuru stood up.

Anyway, that was his last evening on the ice. Javi should have been in Toronto a few hours ago, but his flight had been cancelled. Yuzuru once again tried a flying camel: it worked, but he travelled too much while he was spinning. He ached to see Javi. To kiss him, too. He was missing him surprisingly much: after being alone for three and a half years, Yuzuru had thought he could resist twenty days without Javi. But he wanted Javi back; actually, he wanted Javi, period. Even if it meant getting no more chances to train each evening for hours – lest he lied to him, but Yuzuru didn’t want to lie to Javi. He sped up, skating backwards, set up for a triple Toe loop, took off and completed three full turns in the air, but he could feel his body off axes, and when he landed he had to step out and put a hand on the ice not to fall down. Shit. And all the other jumps were even worse, excluding the Axel. Not lying to Javi would mean telling him everything. Am I ready to tell him also the part of truth I kept to myself?, Yuzuru wondered while he set up for a double Axel that came out impeccable. Yes, maybe he was ready; he was not ready for the consequences, though, and probably he would never be. Yuzuru sped up again and decided it was time to be brave. He turned forward and jumped. One, two, three turns and a half… triple Axel, yes! But when he landed he felt as if his left leg was pulling him down and he fell on his butt, sliding on the ice for a few meters. Wow, it hurt. Yuzuru waited for his breath to slow down, shook his head, got up to his feet, raised his eyes, and froze.

At the edge of the ice, Javi was staring at him.

Their gazes locked for an eternity, then Javi finally talked.

“Who the fuck are you?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I never lied to you, Javi,” Yuzuru said, with a voice so faint that Javier heard him just thanks to the silence around them.  
> “You sure? I’m a skater, you can jump a triple Axel and you didn’t tell me. To me, it does look like lying.”

As soon as the taxi pulled away from the sidewalk out of the Arrival Terminal at the Toronto airport and sped up, Javier leaned against the headrest and closed his eyes. God, what a journey. First, the flight Madrid-New York had been cancelled, so he had been booked on a flight due for the morning after; then, an unexpected chance: at the Iberian counter, where he was trying to find out if he could turn the reservation for a night at the airport hotel that the airline had given him into a taxi ride to his parents’ place and return, he had met a hostess who loved ice skating in general, Javier Fernández in particular, and who had found him a seat on a flight expected one and a half hour later than the cancelled one. At first Javier had felt guilty, he didn’t like the idea of receiving a special treatment; but then he had given in, unable to bear the perspective of going back to Madrid, waking up inhumanly early and having to answer once again all his sister’s questions about Yuzuru…

Javier opened his eyes.

Yuzuru.

They had talked so much, while Javier was in Spain. They would text and speak on the phone every day, and they had three video calls. Warm, caring moments; amusing moments, with jokes and laughs. Since the first day, though, something else had seeped through their jokes and laughs; something sounding like a whisper, at the beginning, but turning with time into a loud voice. The voice of nostalgia. Javier was missing Yuzu, his physical presence. He was missing Yuzu adorably wrinkling his nose when Javier tried to make him eat something hot, or incessantly humming while he was doing some chore; he was even missing Yuzu beating him at video games, and the almost intimidating look that Yuzu had when competing. He was not only missing Yuzu, though, as he had finally confessed to Laura: he wanted so much to kiss him. To touch him, too. Javier had always and only liked women, so he had always considered himself one hundred per cent straight – which was quite convenient: as a skater, since his childhood he had endured enough jokes and innuendos about his sexual orientation, and probably it would have been much worse if he was gay. Now, he liked a man; he liked him so damn much, he liked him like he had never liked anyone. And he was scared, but he wanted Yuzu so much that he felt strong enough to face his own fear, and any joke or innuendo he might be going to endure…

The taxi pulled up. “Here we are,” the driver said.

“Good.” Javier paid, then the driver helped him with his luggage and left.

Javier rang the intercom. Nothing. Wasn’t Yuzu at home? At quarter to eleven in the night? Javier took the key out of his jacket pocket, opened the front door of the building and, in two tiring times, dragged all his bags to the second floor. He rang the bell, in vain again, then opened with his key.

“Yuzu?” he called as he walked in. There was only a light on, a table lamp in the living room; and Effie was the only one who came to welcome him, rubbing against his calves. Javier leaned down to caress her little head, then took his luggage to his room. The apartment was perfectly clean and in order; also the laundry basket was empty, and so was the washing machine: Yuzu must have thought that Javi would have many dirty clothes and gave him the chance to do it as soon as he wanted.

“Oh, Yuzu,” Javier whispered, shaking his head with a smile. Where was he, anyway? Still at the Cricket Club? He was probably waiting for some skater to end his special evening practice. Which skater?

Javier took a shower then, still in his bathrobe, lay on his bed and checked the messages on his phone. Yuzu had not even read the text where Javier announced he would arrive today as planned and not tomorrow. Javier tried to call him: Yuzu’s phone rang, but he didn’t answer. Yes, Yuzu was surely at the Cricket Club: when he was working, he always totally ignored the existence of those stupid devices called phones. Okay then, Javier would wait for him: after sleeping from Madrid to New York, and from New York to Toronto, he felt tired, okay, but not sleepy at all.. what about giving Yuzu a surprise? Javier stood up. He could go to the Cricket Club and pick Yuzu up: why not? He booked a taxi while putting on some clean clothes and left the building just as the taxi was pulling up.

“Toronto Cricket Club, Wilson Avenue, please,” he said to the driver as he got in the car.

“Fine.” The driver sped up into the night.

Javier turned to the window and looked outside, but instead of streets and buildings he saw his own reflection, and realized he was grinning. I look like a total dork, he thought, and his grin turned into a half laugh. Well, he was gleeful – no, he was _happy_. He had won a very deserved silver medal at the Grand Prix Final, he had celebrated Christmas with his family and in a few minutes he would meet Yuzu again. But how long did that damn taxi take, to get to the Cricket Club??

It took twenty eternal minutes. Javier paid, ran to the entrance and opened the door with his key. There was no music… funny. From the rink, though, a gentle glow was weakly lighting up the hallway, and Javier heard a sound of blades on the ice. He frowned and walked to the rink. Who, between his training mates, had such a smooth, light way of skating? A girl?

Javier froze as soon as he saw who was on the ice.

Yuzuru.

He was wearing professional training gear and moved on the ice like no one Javier had ever seen. Graceful as a fairy, his arms and hands elegant and expressive like a ballet dancer’s. He saw Yuzuru doing a flying camel: he spun slowly and travelled too much, but the position was perfect. He saw Yuzuru speeding up, taking off for a Toe loop, doing three turns off axis and landing badly – but it was a triple Toe loop anyway. Followed by a dreadfully high and flawless double Axel. And he saw Yuzuru falling after a triple Axel: bad but _triple_ , good Lord.

Then, Yuzuru saw him.

They stared at each other.

Javier had the feeling that he could hear Yuzuru’s heart hammering, and that Yuzuru could hear _his_ , Javier’s heart hammering. After what felt like the whole eternity, Javier found his voice again:

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Javi…”

“I asked you who. The fuck. Are. You.”

Yuzuru dropped his head. Standing still in the middle of the rink, with his head bowed and his arms hanging down, he looked defeated and hurt. His eyes, when he raised his head, were full of pain.

“I never lied to you, Javi,” Yuzuru said, with a voice so faint that Javier heard him just thanks to the silence around them.

“You sure? I’m a skater, you can jump a triple Axel and you didn’t tell me. To me, it does look like lying.” At the word _lying_ , Javier’s voice trembled. When he was fourteen, one day his best friend, Jorge, had told him that he couldn’t go to the park to play soccer with him because he wasn’t well; an hour later, Javier had seen Jorge strolling with three boys, the so called Three of Hearts, the coolest and most popular guys in their school. Javier could understand why Jorge had taken a chance to hang around with them – everyone wanted to make friends with the Three of Hearts – and he could even understand why Jorge hadn’t said anything to him: those three very straight, very loved-by-all-the-girls boys made so often fun of Javier and his _girly_ _sport_. And yet, it had been the first, great sorrow of his life: Jorge was his best friend since they were six, but he had thought that Javier could not understand. And now Yuzuru had just done the same, and it was a thousand times more painful.

“I never lied to you,” Yuzuru repeated, still at the center of the rink, his fingers relaxing and clenching into fists. “There are things I didn’t tell you, _not yet_ , but… oh.”

Javier followed Yuzuru’s gaze: on the ice there was a drop of blood, so red in all that white that it was blinding. Then another drop of blood fell, and another one. Javier raised his eyes and saw Yuzuru taking off a glove and touching his nose with a finger. “Oh,” Yuzuru said again when he saw all the blood on his finger too.

“Oh Jesus.” Javier ran to the Winnie the Pooh tissue-box lying on a bench, took a half dozen tissues and, walking carefully on the ice with his sneakers, got to Yuzuru. “Here,” he said, handing out the tissues.

“Thank you.” Yuzu took the tissues without looking at Javier and started wiping his nostrils; Javier went back to the Winnie the Pooh, grabbed other tissues and crouched to wipe away the stains on the ice. When he stood up, Yuzuru had wiped the blood from his face and put a small paper pipe in one of his nostrils. He looked funny, and tender, and despite everything Javier felt a wave of affection crush in his heart.

“We will talk when we’re home, okay?” he said. “Go to change your clothes.”

“But I still have to resurf…”

“I’ll resurface the ice. Come on, go.”

“Okay.” Yuzuru smiled at him, vulnerable and unsure, then turned and skated away. Javier can’t help watching him. How harmonious he was when he skated, how elegant and _different_. Javier walked to the Zamboni, the first tears brimming his eyes. Because, despite his disappointment, sense of betrayal, and anger, what he felt for Yuzu was still there.

Intact.

They sat on the sofa in the living room, as far as possible from one another and with Effie between them, as if she was the referee of a match. Yuzuru had his hair still wet after the shower and a cup still full of tea in his hands; Javier had finished his second cup of coffee.

“I skate since I was four,” Yuzuru said finally. “And I am… I mean, I was good. Very good. So, when I was still a little boy, I started to compete. And to win many competitions, too. My coach, Nanami Abe-sensei, and many others told I was the new hope of the Japanese ice skating. But then my asthma got worse, much worse. For two years, I had to nearly stop skating and to take care of my health. Therapies, hospitals… that was my life in 2008 and 2009.”

Javier wanted to reach out and take Yuzu’s hand, but he didn’t.

“I could start training again only in the summer of 2010,” Yuzuru went on. “The 11th of March 2011, I was once again _the hope of Japanese ice skating_. I was planning to take part in some minor competitions at the beginning of the season 2011-2012, then to Nationals. Well, I was planning to _win_ those competitions, and Nationals too.” Yuzuru looked at Javier, his eyes shining with old pride for a moment. “If I had won Nationals, I could have taken part in Worlds 2012, and if Worlds had gone well, I… I would have asked Brian Orser to be my coach.”

“What?” Javier said, with just the ghost of a voice. He felt as if his throat was covered with gravel.

Yuzuru nodded, a faint smile on his lips. “That was my dream,” he confirmed. “Coming to Toronto and training with Brian Orser. The coach of Yuna Kim, the best female skater of all time.” Yuzuru blinked. “The coach of Javier Fernández, the best quad Salchow of all time.”

The silence stretched between them for some moments.

“The day of the earthquake, I was training,” Yuzuru continued. “That’s why I was late for my grandpa’s birthday. Because I was skating.”

Javier could quite hear the sentence Yuzu hadn’t pronounced: _Since that day, skating stopped being my passion and became my fault; my disgrace_.

“That’s why you… you chose Toronto, when you decided to leave Japan?” he asked. “Because of the Cricket Club?”

Yuzu shrugged. “Toronto was the only town where I’d ever thought I could live, or I wanted to live, except Sendai,” he answered. “It was the only town where there was someone I knew, so to say. Someone I respected so much and I… I cared for. Yes.” Yuzu chuckled bitterly. “Silly, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “And yet, getting to Toronto had been the goal of my life for three years. The reason why I could get up every morning, and face and get over every day. And I can tell you there were many, so many hard days.”

Yes, Javier could guess there were. He wanted again to take Yuzu’s hand, and he would have done it, if in that moment Yuzu hadn’t stood up.

“I got to Toronto last summer,” he said while he disappeared into the bedroom. “And I began hanging around the Cricket Club, obviously. You know? There’s a big tree, in the park by the club, and from its branches you can see the rink.” He appeared on the threshold again, his old sack in his hands, and looked at Javier. “I used to climb on a branch and watch the skaters practice. Those moments always made my day. Especially when I could watch _you_ , Javi.” Yuzu’s eyes were shining so bright, now. “I didn’t want to… to stalk you, or… but when I saw you getting on the bus 165, I couldn’t help but follow you. I’m sorry.”

Javier could only find the strength to shake his head. Yuzu sighed, then walked back to the sofa and sat down, opening the sack.

“Inside this sack there is all that remains of Yuzuru Hanyu,” he said. “The training gear you saw me wearing tonight, it’s the same I wore on the 11th of March 2011.” He took out of the sack a pot holder and handed it to Javier. “I found it in the ruins of the building where my family lived. Saya, my sister, had made it at school for my mother.”

Javier took the pot holder. It was ugly, badly crocheted, the thread knotting and pulling here and there. Pink cotton. Javier thought of the pot holders in his parents’ kitchen, hanging neatly on the wall over the stove, ready to be replaced by others when they were dirty or too old. The gravel he felt in his throat had turned into a jagged, scratching lump.

“And this is the reason why they call… _called_ me Blade.”

Javier put delicately down the pot holder – Effie sniffed it for a second, then went back to sleep – and took what Yuzu was handing to him. A pair of skating blades. Twisted, rusty, but professional.

“I took them off because my skates were the only shoes I had, at the beginning,” Yuzu explained, “and I kept them because I knew that I might need to defend myself, in… in my new life. And I was right. I never used them to hurt anyone, though. Never, Javi.” Yuzu crouched in front of Javier, but didn’t dare to touch him. “You know that. I’d rather hurt myself.”

Oh yes, Javier knew that. And he understood, now.

“I’m sorry, Yuzu,” was all he could whisper, putting the blades beside the pot holder.

Yuzuru finally dared to put a hand on Javier’s knee. “I never lied to you, Javi,” he said with fervor. “I didn’t tell you everything, that’s true. But it has nothing to do with you, really. I trust you so much. The fact is, I… I wasn’t ready to tell everything. I _am_ not ready. To be Yuzuru Hanyu again, to… can you understand?”

Javier nodded, staring at Yuzu’s hand on his knee. Yes, he could understand – and it was awful. They stayed like that for a few more seconds; then Yuzu stood up, picked up his blades and the pot holder, then walked again to the bedroom.

Javier dropped his head, still staring at his knee, as if Yuzu’s hand had left an invisible trace there. What am I feeling?, he wondered. He felt like crying, most of all. For Yuzu’s lost family. For the boy who was wandering around the world wearing skates as shoes and carrying a sack full of memories and pain as his only luggage. For the crazy dream that had allowed him and the boy to meet. And for himself, too, because from now on that boy’s pain would be his own pain too. Because he was falling in love with that boy.

Javier closed his eyes, pressed his eyelids with thumb and forefinger, opened them again. From Yuzu’s room, he heard some muffled, unidentifiable sounds. What…? Effie meowed; Javier stood up and went to check on him: Yuzuru was putting all his things on the bed.

“What are you doing?” Javier asked.

“I’m packing my things”, Yuzuru said, without looking at him and keeping piling his things.

Javier felt like someone had punched him in his stomach. “Why?”

Yuzu took his old sport bag and put it on the bed as well. “Because I’m going away.”

“What??”

“I saw how you looked at me before, at the club.” Yuzu started putting his clothes into the bag. “You don’t trust me anymore, and I can perfectly understand why. So, I’m doing what you’re too good and kind to ask me to do: I go away.”

Javier had to lean against the door frame not to lose his balance. “But I don’t want you to go away,” he said, his voice trembling so much that its volume was uneven.

Yuzu stopped and turned to him for a moment, then went back to his chore. “As I said, you’re too good and kind,” he whispered flatly.

“I’m not!” Javier straightened up, grabbed Yuzu by the shoulders and turned him to look into his eyes. “This has nothing to do with me being good or kind or whatever, you idiot,” he said, taking Yuzu’s face in his hands, “I trust you,” he added, finding out in this very moment that it was true: he trusted Yuzu, “and I don’t want you to go,” Yuzu’s lips were trembling and Javier _had_ to kiss them, “I want you with me, Yuzu,” he kissed the tears on Yuzu’s cheeks, “please,” he still kept Yuzu’s face in his hands, kissing Yuzu’s lips again and again, “don’t leave me,” Yuzu kept his eyes shut and cried, “don’t leave me, Yuzu,” _don’t ever leave me_ , Javier prayed, and Yuzu opened his eyes and wrapped his arms around Javier’s neck and kissed him back, finally, “I don’t leave you,” he said, and “Javi,” he sighed, and Javier put an arm around Yuzu’s waist and took Yuzu’s chin with his fingers to deepen their kisses and they fell entwined on the bed – amongst socks and underwear, amongst kisses tasting like salt, relief, want.

Love.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He made it.  
> A great skate, despite the fall in the step sequence.  
> A great Yuzuru Hanyu.  
> Him.

Outside the restaurant, the air was icy cold and smelled of snow. Yuzuru inhaled it as deep as he could. He loved the air of Toronto, so dry and light; it made him feel like laughing. Maybe he was just happy.

“So now you get into your pre-electoral silence?” Eve asked Javi.

“Come on, let’s call it by its name: _Lent_ ,” Steve corrected her. “No alcohol, no sweets-cakes-chips, no dinners with friends, no late nights.” Steve turned to Yuzu. “It will be a very boring month with a very boring boyfriend, Yuzu.”

Yuzuru felt his cheeks blush and his heart jump. _Boyfriend_.

“Uh, I will consider dating Elizabet, then,” he said, and smiled innocently at Javi, “or the _other_ Javier.”

Javi fake glared at him. “Do it, and you won’t caress Effie for one month,” he threatened Yuzuru, but with a gentle smile on his lips. “ _Two_ months, if you date Javier Raya.”

“Two months without caressing Effie?? Nooooooo!” Yuzuru pretended to tear his hair out in despair. “Okay, I surrender to this unfair, brute force. I won’t date anyone but you, right?”

Javi chuckled. “Right,” he said softly, putting a hand on Yuzuru’s nape and turning to the Steves. “Well, I think that even during lent I’m allowed to walk, talk, or drink a nice, big glass of water, so…”

“Uh, I can’t wait!” Steve howled. “Can I at least drink _sparkling_ water or is it too much?”

“I must admit that the idea of going to a nice bar and drinking a glass of water is just _irresistible_ ,” Eve said, then wrapped an arm around her husband’s waist. “Come on, honey, let’s go home. And you, Javi, go and put some ashes on your head.”

“It is not Wednesday!”

“But your Lent starts tomorrow, doesn’t it? So today it’s your personal Ashes Wednesday.” Eve patted Javi on his shoulder, smiling. “Okay, guys, we’re going. Good night.”

“Night!”

They parted, walking in opposite directions. After a few steps, Yuzuru felt Javi’s hand looking for his, lacing their fingers together, and he started lightly. Even though they had sex and slept in the same bed since two months, even though they kissed every morning when they woke up and every night before switching the light off, even though they held hands when they walked side by side, Yuzuru still found it hard to believe that Javi wanted him. Javi wanted him so much that he had accepted he was attracted to a man for the first time in his life. Javi wanted him despite knowing his past and the things he’d done to survive. It was a miracle, and every time Yuzuru woke up feeling Javi’s breath on his nape, every time Javi gave him even the briefest peck on his lips, every time Javi’s fingers looked for his, Yuzuru felt a dazzling joy beaming throughout his heart and soul.

“Actually, I’ll be quite boring from now until Worlds,” Javier said while they were walking and making their way along the crowded streets of that Saturday night. “I’m sorry, but…”

“It doesn’t matter, Javi,” Yuzuru interrupted him. “I got it, I really do… and, well, it _does_ matter. I _want_ you to do this kind of Lent, and I’ll watch over you, so that you follow all the rules as strictly as you have to, because I want you to win Worlds.”

Javi stopped, looked at him. “Do you really think I can win?” he asked.

“Of course you can,” Yuzuru said, sure. “You’re a great skater, Javi. The only thing that can betray you, is your head. If you keep on telling yourself that you can’t make it, you won’t. But if you go to Shanghai with even just a little bit of my conviction, then you will win.”

Javi gasped. He looked moved, his eyes more sparkling and intense than ever. “Okay, I’ll go there carrying your conviction with me,” he said, rubbing gently Yuzuru’s hips with his hands. “You’re one of the best skaters I’ve ever seen, and if you say I can make it, then I will make it.”

One of the best skaters Javier Fernández has ever seen, Yuzuru thought. He took Javi’s hands in his. “You trust me too much,” he whispered.

“It’s you who should trust yourself a bit more,” Javi said, squeezing Yuzuru’s hands.

“Look who’s talking.”

They smiled at each other; then Yuzuru saw Javi look at his lips, and felt a shiver of anticipation. Every time he realized that Javi was going to kiss him, caress him, or even just hug him, Yuzuru felt that shiver. And when Javi leaned in and actually kissed him, one hand warming Yuzuru’s skin on his cheek, ear and neck, the other one pulling him closer and closer by his waist, that shiver turned into electricity, running through Yuzuru’s body and igniting sparks in each and every of his nerves. It was always like that. Every time Javi was kissing him, Yuzuru felt life and joy rushing in his blood, making his heartbeat faster and louder, making his skin tingle, and filling his soul with music. He felt like laughing. He felt like jumping. He’d been so quiet and still, for three and a half years. Quiet and still on the ships and trucks where he hid to clandestinely pass a border; under the sunshine, waiting for a recruiter to choose the ten guys he needed to work fourteen hours in some field; by a church, panhandling; when he slept only to make time pass by and to forget he was hungry but had nothing to eat. Most of all, though, he’d been so quiet and still _inside_ , invariably drowned in his pain and guilt. Now there were so many new feelings, inside him: pride for being appreciated at work, the admiration and, yes, the jealousy for the Cricket Club’s skaters, the ecstasy of skating again, the comfort of having a home, a cat even. Then, there was Javi. Javi who looked at him as if he was beautiful and important, Javi who touched him and kissed him in a way that made Yuzuru burn with a passion he had never felt during his previous sexual encounters – when he tried to keep his mind and heart closed, frozen, so that he could not feel the invasion his body was suffering.

Javi kissed him and Yuzuru’s soul danced, joyful and restless like it was running through his body, casting lapilli everywhere, crackling happily.

When they pulled away to breathe, they held tight without talking for a while. Then Javi rubbed Yuzuru’s back one last time, took his hand and silently invited him to start walking again.

“Do you think we could tell the truth to the Steves?” Javi asked after some moments.

Yuzuru had been waiting for that question for quite a long time, and yet he still didn’t know how to answer it.

“I don’t know,” he said, sincerely. “I hate not to tell them everything. I hate not to tell Brian, or Tracy, or…” he smiled, “your sister.”

Javi smiled too: he adored Laura, and Yuzuru understood him just too well. Laura reminded him of Saya: her same irony, her same bright intelligence. Talking with Laura was nice and heart-wrenching at once.

“But it’s just…” Yuzuru paused, passing his tongue on his lips. “If the Steves know, and then Brian knows, and Tracy, and… well, it would mean bringing Yuzuru Hanyu slowly back to life.”

Javier stopped walking again, took Yuzuru’s wrists in his hands. “Don’t you think that it would be right? That it would be _time_?”

Yuzuru dropped his head. “I don’t know, Javi,” he whispered.

Javi sighed. “Listen, I know how much guilt you feel, and… but you _paid_ by now. So much, for such a long time. Enough, Yuzu. You’re wonderful, believe it or not. And you deserve to skate, and the world deserves to see you skate.”

Yuzuru raised his head. Javi’s eyes were warm, looking at him with so much softness that Yuzuru felt his heart clench. He put a hand on Javi’s cheek, with his thumb started caressing the light stubble there. “I don’t know, Javi. Really. I just know that it’s too early. So much has changed in my life, I need to think about so many things, to _figure out_ so many things. Including myself, and… can you understand? Please.”

Javi leaned into Yuzuru’s touch. “I understand,” he said. “You’ll have to make a decision, though, sooner or later.”

“I know, and I promise you I’ll do my best, but… I need time.” Yuzuru swallowed. “Can you wait for me?” he asked.

Javi kissed the palm of his hand. “Of course I can.” He hugged him. “Of course.”

Yuzuru melted in Javi’s arms, pressing his nose in the crook of Javi’s scented neck. They stood still for some moments, people walking by, chatting and laughing around them. Then Javi started swinging slowly, his arms secure around Yuzuru’s waist, humming under his breath.

“Javi,” Yuzuru called, his nose still pressed against Javi’s skin, “are you… dancing?”

Javi leaned back just as much as to look at him. Javi’s eyes were shining with so much affection that Yuzuru felt a small explosion of happiness inside his chest, sweet and warm and delicious like a toasted marshmallow.

“ _We_ are dancing,” Javi said. “Come on.”

They began swaying together, ever so slowly, and Yuzuru knew immediately that he would never forget that moment. No matter what the future would bring, he would hide that slow dance with Javi in the treasure chest inside his heart where he kept all that was precious to him. His mom sewing the costume for his first competition, frowning in concentration, the point of her tongue sticking out between her lips. His father making a small wooden theater with marionettes to entertain him while he had pneumonia. His sister lacing his boots when he was too young to do it on his own. And now, Javi dancing with him in the middle of a crowded street, not caring about the people around them, following his inner music.

Their cheeks were pressed together and Yuzuru felt the blood pulsing in Javi’s temple, the humid softness of Javi’s lips brushing his ear, murmuring something so lowly that he couldn’t quite grasp the words. He felt Javi’s want, too, hot like his own, and it was like listening to a promise: soon they would go home, and make love, and Yuzuru couldn’t wait for it – but at the same time he wanted their slow dance to last forever.

“ _Te vi, te vi, te vi / yo no buscaba a nadie y te vi_ ,” Javi’s voice sang in Yuzuru’s ear, just a bit louder so that he could hear it – Javi’s tone caressing and filled with something that sounded like love –, and Yuzuru felt tears pooling behind his eyelids. He raised his head to look at Javi, passed his fingertips on every inch of Javi’s face, just to make sure Javi was there, real, with him.

“Javi,” he called, his voice trembling.

Javi brushed his cheekbone with his knuckles. “Yes?” he asked.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?” Yuzuru said.

“I’m not. Sooner or later you will leave Blade totally behind, I know.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“You won’t be alone, though.”

“Javi?”

“Mhm?”

“Can you please hold me tight? Very tight? Only for a moment.”

Javi smiled, leaned his head on Yuzuru’s shoulder and pulled him closer.

“I can hold you tight forever.”

“It’s just a state of mind,” Yuzuru said. “You fear you can’t jump higher, so you… dig your head in your shoulders, all your body tense… of course you can’t jump higher, stiff as you are.”

Wiping the sweat off of his face with a towel, Javi was carefully listening to him. “It might be true… well, it _is_ true, even Ghislain told me something like that. I don’t know how to fix it, though.”

Yuzuru thought about it for a few seconds. “Try to focus only on your shoulders,” he said then. “No quads now. Just triple jumps, maybe even doubles. For now, what matters is that your body learns by heart to keep your shoulders relaxed. Yes?”

Javi put the towel back on the bench. “Well, let’s try,” he said, not convinced but not skeptical either.

For about fifteen minutes, Javi jumped only double and sometimes triple Toe loops; Yuzuru had chosen a background music that had nothing to do with Javi’s programs, but that melted with the dim lights of the club at night, creating a pleasant atmosphere. Jump by jump, Javi’s shoulders, and therefore his neck and arms, were more and more relaxed. Yuzuru was skating at some distance from him; when it seemed that Javi could jump all kind of triples keeping the right body position, Yuzuru went to the PC and put on Javi’s short program music. Javi didn’t stop, as if that change was normal and not surprising at all, and he got smoothly into the choreography. Preparation, quad Salchow: perfect. Preparation, triple Axel: very good. Preparation, quad plus triple Toe loop…

“Yeeeeees!” Yuzuru shouted with all his enthusiasm, and Javi stopped and looked at him.

“Was it better?” he asked, hopeful.

“Much better!”

“Sure? Because I _felt_ it was better, but was it really higher, or…”

“It was!” Yuzuru turned off the music and skated to Javi. “It was _way_ higher, a splendid quad Toe,” he said, grinning. He was so proud of Javi. “If your training goes on like that, in fifteen days you’ll be world champion.”

Also Javi grinned, arranging some hair behind Yuzuru’s ear. “Well, if I’ll be world champion, it will mean you are a great coach,” he said.

“True!” Yuzuru caressed Javi’s hairline, where sweat made each lock curl. “I wouldn’t mind coming with you and sitting by your side at the Kiss & Cry.”

“Uh, I wouldn’t mind too,” Javi said, wrapping his arms around Yuzuru’s waist and leaning in.

They kissed, slowly, softly, and it was all so beautiful – skating together at the Cricket Club at night, and kissing. But even as they were kissing, Yuzuru could feel a shadow crawling on them. A shadow getting bigger and darker as time went by, as they shared the ice some nights and Yuzuru skated better and better – farer and farer from Blade, unavoidably.

“By the way, are you done with your free skate’s music? Is it ready?” Javier asked him when they parted.

Yuzuru chased the shadow away and smiled. “Yes! I finished editing it a couple of hours ago, while I was waiting for you. Want to listen?”

“Want to see you skating to it.”

Yuzuru felt suddenly breathless. “Javi…” he stuttered.

“Oh, come on! It’s been weeks since you started rehearsing a bit of your program here, a bit there… and you spent the last few days trying to put together again the exact mix of the free skate you were practicing when… well, in 2011.” Javi smirked. “I’m more than sure that you did some run-through while no one was here to see you. So yes, I’d love to watch you skate this program!”

Yuzuru stared silently at Javi for some more moments. That smirk was so Javi’s: teasing, but warm and open; the smirk of a honest, gentle man who didn’t want to look too serious or dramatic, but who would have really loved to see him skating on the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann’s _Romeo+Juliet_. Could Yuzuru do it, for the sake of that man? Of course. He could do it, he probably _should_ do it; and, most of all, he needed to. He needed Javi to see him for who he really was; and he knew that nobody, not even Javi, could see him thoroughly, as long as they didn’t see him on the ice.

“Okay,” Yuzuru said finally, his voice thin and just a tad scared, and the way Javi reacted to that _Okay_ – a broader smile, starry eyes – was like a breeze lifting Yuzuru from the ground. Javi trusted him. Javi believed in him.

“Thank you,” Javi said, then skated out of the rink and sat on the bench by the PC.

Yuzuru skated to the PC and clicked on his folder, hidden inside the folder called _Fernández_ , placing the cursor on the right music file. “There,” he said, and skated back to the center of the ice. “You just have to click on _R &J2011_.”

“Alright.” Javi reached out for the touchpad. “Ready?”

Yuzuru turned his head to the left, put the right elbow on his head and reached for the right armpit with his left arm. “Ready,” he answered.

The music started.

A dramatic, loud choir that seemed to foresee the final tragedy of two star-crossed lovers, and Yuzuru started to skate. His first, great challenge: a quad Toe loop. Preparation, jump, landing. Good, very good. Yuzuru skated on. Spread eagle, triple Axel. Excellent. Then triple flip, excellent as well. First spin. God, he was already tired and he had just begun. The music changed, slowing down to a sweet, essential melody, as if there were no notes enough to tell that teenage love. Combination jump, triple Lutz plus triple Toe loop. The Lutz must have been good, Yuzuru knew that his air position wasn’t always straight when he jumped a Lutz, but now it had felt fine. Step sequence… it was Javi gasping, even before the pain in his knees, to make Yuzuru understand that he had fallen. Shit, falling in a step sequence!... he got up. In a few seconds a difficult combination was awaiting him, and he was going to jump it perfectly, despite his stupid fall. Triple Axel plus triple Toe loop. Perfect, yes, and fuck the step sequence: look at me, look at what I can do. Jump sequence, triple Lutz, double Toe loop, double Toe loop. Yuzuru was exhausted, but he was in the second half of the program by now. Come on. Ina Bauer across the rink. Triple Loop, smooth as a mountain lake. Another spin, while the music changed to introduce the tragic ending. Yuzuru’s thighs, ankles and lungs were burning and screaming, but it didn’t matter. He could scream louder, and he did scream, lifting his right arm, before launching himself into the choreographic sequence. Yes, he could scream louder, and yes, he could be stronger – stronger than tiredness, than anything and anybody, stronger than himself. The music was now telling about the death hovering above Verona. Triple Salchow, painful and not beautiful but still correct, then the last spin. God, he couldn’t breathe anymore. His limbs were trembling, Yuzuru kept spinning, reached for his right blade and stretched his body into a Bielmann. When he let go of the blade, he made what felt like a superhuman effort not to let his leg drop like a dead weight on the ice. One more turn, a stab to his heart. On the very last note, he raised his eyes to the ceiling and opened his arms.

He made it.

A great skate, despite the fall in the step sequence.

A great Yuzuru Hanyu.

Him.

When he lowered his head, he met Javi’s eyes – and in Javi’s eyes he saw himself. The strength he had acquired in dangerous, challenging years; the love and guilt and regret and hope and pain and pride that filled his heart; the stubbornness that made him go on and on, no matter what; his never ending dreams, his talent, the flights of his mind and the figments of his fantasy. He saw the kid he has been, Blade, so many other things – and each element was the ring of a chain encircling and defining his identity. Yuzuru Hanyu, skater.

Javi and him kept staring at each other for some seconds. Then Yuzuru couldn’t resist anymore and skated to him.

“Hey,” he said, an uncertain smile on his lips, stopping in front of Javi. “Don’t you say anything?”

Javi sat with his elbows on his knees. He didn’t say anything; he just kept staring at Yuzuru.

“Javi? What’s wrong?” Javi’s gaze on him was so intense that Yuzuru felt it burn on his skin. He crouched in front of Javi, not daring to touch him. “Did I do something wrong?” Silence, still; and that burning gaze. “Javi, you are scaring me. If you don’t…” He couldn’t talk any further, because Javi had taken his face in his own hands and was kissing him, biting his lips, like he wanted to eat his mouth, and Yuzuru felt an electric wave flood his body.

“Javi…”

“Ssst.” Javi stood up and made Yuzuru stand up too. “Don’t speak, please,” he whispered, then pulled Yuzuru as close as he could and kissed him again, bit his lips again, grabbed the hem of his jersey and took it off – and everything was intense and urgent, their bodies entwined on the bench, the blades of their skates bumping and screeching, their tongues licking and sucking, their hands roaming, their erections grinding, slowly at the beginning, then faster and faster, even more intense and urgent, and Yuzuru stuck his nails in Javi’s skin until he came and couldn’t see anything but a silver, magnificent light.

When he could see and think again, his breath still labored and gentle bursts of pleasure in his belly, he realized that his cheeks were wet with tears, and that the tears were dripping from Javi’s eyes. Javi who lay on him, his eyes still staring at Yuzuru.

“I’ve never seen anyone skate like you do,” Javi said after a while.

Yuzuru gasped, but didn’t speak.

“Never,” Javi repeated. “I’ve never seen anyone with that passion, with… with an enchanted balloon around them that… a balloon that can mesmerize and capture anyone watching.” Javi propped on an elbow and looked at Yuzuru. With affection, but also with sadness. He took a lock of hair off of Yuzuru’s forehead, caressed Yuzuru’s cheek with his fingers. Yuzuru felt his own tears melting with Javi’s on his skin.

“You could be such a great skater,” Javi said, putting his head on Yuzuru’s chest with a sigh. “Yuzuru Hanyu,” he whispered. “The greatest skater of all time.”

Yuzuru felt it immediately.

As soon as Javi opened the club door, even before walking out.

As if there was a different texture of the air, as if the chilly wind of the night kept crashing against an unusual obstacle on his way.

Yuzuru felt it immediately and wanted to stop Javi, tell him not to walk out and to lock the door. But it was too late already: Javi opened the door, walked out of the club, and a moment and a gasp later there was an arm around Javi’s neck and a knife against Javi’s throat.

“Skinny,” Yuzuru exhaled. “Skinny, don’t…”

“Shut up!” the other interrupted him. “Go back inside. With your arms up.”

Yuzuru lifted his arms and walked back into the club. Skinny followed, pushing Javi in front of him.

“Good, Blade,” he said when they were in the hall. “Now give me all the money you can find.”

Yuzuru was staring at Javi. He didn’t look scared, not much; more… focused. “I give you money all the time, Skinny.”

The other one chuckled, a brief, unpleasant sound. “Money? You give me small change, that’s what you give me.”

“Yu… Blade gives you all that he can,” Javi intervened, “ don’t…”

“Yeah, yeah, same old story, and I don’t even give a fuck whether it’s true or not. The only _true_ thing that counts…” Skinny paused, licking his chapped lips many times. Was he shivering? “The only true thing,” Skinny started again, “is that we are in a place for rich assholes, aren’t we? We are in a posh, fucking club for fucking rich assholes, so there will be money, somewhere, so you see, Blade, it’s very simple: go and get that money.”

Yes, he was shivering.

“Where?” Yuzuru asked him. Skinny needed his dope. He wasn’t evil; he was going through withdrawal. So he was weak. But hopeless, desperate, therefore unpredictable. Dangerous? “The administration is locked, all the offices are locked. The café…”

“I NEED MONEY!” Skinny cried, and Yuzuru saw the knife pushing a bit more into Javi’s skin. “There are stacks of things, here, stacks of fucking valuable things, am I right? So go and get something, Blade, and put everything in a fucking bag.”

Think, Yuzu, think.

But all Yuzuru could think about, was that he would kill Skinny, if he hurt Javi.

“Okay,” he said. “I go to look for something valuable.” Think, Yuzu. “But you’re on my way, Skinny. You need to move.” Yuzuru had the entrance door behind him, while Skinny and Javi gave their backs to the inside of the club.

Skinny didn’t move. Yuzuru and Javi looked at each other.

“Skinny, if you don’t move, the only thing I can give you is the counter here at the reception,” Yuzuru explained.

Skinny licked his lips again. He was deadly pale, with bluish circles around his eyes and hollow cheekbones, hollower than ever. “Okay,” he said. “Move your ass.”

“I’ll be back in a mo.” Yuzuru moved. And as soon as he could, he hooked Skinny’s ankle with his foot and pulled, while Javi poked Skinny’s ribs with an elbow and ducked his head to get free from the other one. Skinny swayed, gasping in surprise, then fell on his knees – and Yuzuru was over him, pushing him down with his stomach on the floor, straddling him and blocking his crossed wrist on his back.

Yuzuru didn’t have the time to ask himself “Now what?” or to meet Javi’s eyes: from Skinny’s mouth came a low, continuous lament, like a siren in the distance, whining away. Without setting his hands free, Yuzuru got up on his knees, although he was quite sure it wasn’t his weight what made Skinny whine. As to confirm his guess, as soon as Yuzuru straightened up Skinny began to whine louder and higher, a piercing whimper.

“Skinny? What’s wrong?” Yuzuru asked him, although he feared he knew the answer already.

“I’m afraid he needs to go to the hospital,” Javi said, leaning by Yuzuru. “We should…”

“LET ME GOOOOOOOO!” Skinny’s whimper had turned into words, but it was still piercing, even more painful than before. “BLAAAAAADE! LET ME GO LET ME GO LET MEEEEEEE!” Skinny was trying to break loose, but had not enough strength. From time to time his shoulders and feet twitched, as if he had kind of a tic.

“Skinny,” Yuzuru tried, angst drying out his mouth, “you can’t…”

“LET ME GOOOO! LET MEEEEE! LET…” Skinny’s voice died, choked as if a claw had grabbed his neck, and he started coughing and gasping for air. Was it because of his withdrawal? Yuzuru jumped on his feet.

“Yuzu!” Javi called. “What…”

“Call an ambulance!” Yuzuru interrupted him, then rushed to his backpack and rummaged through it until he found his inhaler. Javi was speaking at the phone. Yuzuru ran to Skinny, made him sit up and brought the inhaler to his lips, holding him from behind.

“They’ll be here in three minutes,” Javi said, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

“Breathe, you idiot, breathe!” Yuzuru screamed. “In, out. In, out. Come on!”

Javi crouched in front of Skinny to help him keep the inhaler in the correct position.

“In, out, in, out…”

A handful of seconds went by, at a glacial pace. Then Skinny’s breath got back to normal, more or less, and Yuzuru felt him collapsing in his arms.

“He fainted,” Yuzuru said.

“Well, at least he’s alive,” Javi said.

They stared at each other. Deeply.

“Yuzu, they will call the police,” Javi said finally.

Yes, Yuzuru knew.

“Can’t we take him out of here?” he said. “We can say it all happened outside the club, so that the Cricket won’t be involved. Mhm?” His words sounded like a prayer.

Javi nodded. “We can also avoid talking about what he meant to do here,” he said, then went to pick up Skinny’s knife, which had fallen four or five of feet away from them. “We can say that he was feeling bad already, when we met him.”

Yuzuru stared at him. Javi looked serious, and so tired, but not angry. “It’s up to you, Javi,” Yuzuru said.

Javi stared at him as well, for a long moment. Then he nodded again. “Let’s take him outside,” he said. “As far as we can from the club.”

Yuzuru took Skinny by the arms, Javi by the feet, and together they lifted him; once they were out of the Cricket Club, they walked for about five hundred feet before delicately putting the unconscious boy on the ground.

“Fine,” Javi said, although both his tone and his face told that nothing was fine. “Go to lock the club’s door and then go home, Yuzu.”

“Javi, no.” Yuzuru wanted to take Javi’s hands and hold them tight, but he felt he didn’t have the right nor the permission to do it, right now. “You’re exhausted, in a few days you will leave for Shanghai, you can’t…”

“Yuzuru, the police will come here, or at the hospital,” Javi interrupted him. “Do you really want them to ask for your false passport?”

_No I don’t_ , was the answer. Yuzuru tried to read Javi’s mind, to see through his tiredness and concern: was he hoping that Yuzuru would finally come out with his true identity? In the distance, they heard the siren of an ambulance.

“I go, then,” Yuzuru said. “Will you call me as soon as you can?”

Javi nodded. Without saying anything, without looking at him. Yuzuru turned away and ran back to the Cricket Club, his jaw clenched and a bitter taste in his mouth, while the siren sounded closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, when I wrote this chapter I thought about Yuzu performing at Words 2012 :)))  
> The song Javi sings to Yuzu is "Un vestido y un amor" by Mercedes Sosa, an amazing Argentine singer. Rough translation of the verse that Javi is singing here: "I saw you. I wasn't looking for anyone, then I saw you".  
> Thank you so much for reading!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You’re a skater! How long do you think you could endure to… not to be yourself?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for some angst... sorry :)

_On my way home._

Yuzu answered immediately:

_Waiting for you_.

Javier leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. He was so tired he couldn’t even think anymore. He didn’t need to think, though, to know why he felt so bad, as if he had a boulder weighing on his heart. He didn’t need to think to see, behind his lids, so many scenes from the last seven months: the boy on the bus, his eyes hidden by the hoodie of his sweatshirt; Skinny attacking Javier for the first time and the flash of that boy’s hematite eyes; their messages written on all those breakfast bags, and the first words they exchanged; and Yuzu ringing Javier’s door phone after being beaten up, Yuzu’s tears when Javier and the Steves had arranged a room for him, the exquisite coffee Yuzu put in a thermos for him, Yuzu’s satisfaction and everyone’s appreciation when he started working at the Cricket Club, the shadow of a kiss on the Zamboni and their first, real kiss at Yuzu’s birthday dinner, Yuzu telling his story and Javier feeling all that sorrow seeping into him, becoming his, Javier’s amazement and elation when he realized how beautiful and right having sex with Yuzu was– and a thousand more moments, and kisses, and butterflies flying in his stomach, and his throat constricting with happiness, until tonight. Until Yuzu’s free skate and Skinny’s awkward attack.

Seven incredible months that brought Javier there. On a taxi driving him home from a hospital. Aware that he had to do the right thing, and that he was going to suffer.

“Here we are,” the driver announced.

Javier opened his eyes and looked outside. Yeah, here he was. He paid, got out of the taxi and raised his eyes: it was a few minutes to four a.m., but the lights in their – _their_ – apartment were still on. Yuzu was probably worried and nervous, and surely felt guilty. Javier could quite see him: sitting on the floor or on the less comfortable chair they had, hands joined in his lap, head leaned against the wall and eyes closed, torturing his inner cheeks with his teeth and his mind with his thoughts. It was time to set him free from his anguish and sense of guilt, no matter if Yuzu wanted to or not.

Javier got into the building and into the elevator, even if they lived just on the second floor; as soon as he reached for the lock with his key, Yuzu thrust the door open.

“Javi, come in,” he said, taking Javier’s sport bag. “You must feel exhausted.”

Javier leaned against the door. “ _Exhausted_ is an understatement,” he said. He tried to toe his shoes off, but he realized he wasn’t able to: he couldn’t keep his balance. He exhaled a brief, tired laugh. “Oh, God, look at me,” he said.

“Let me, please.” Yuzu crouched in front of him. “What about a bath?” he said, taking Javier’s shoes off. “The tub is ready. With your favorite salts.”

“Jesus, yes.” Yes, a bath. A cup with some infusion, maybe. Then a clean pajama, clean bedsheets and a two hundred hour sleep, thanks. And afterwards, he would do what he had to do.

Yuzu helped him to walk to the bathroom, take his clothes off and plunge into the water, and only in that moment Javier felt like he could breathe for the first time in hours. Ah, yes… the water was perfumed and warm, the towel rolled under his neck soft, the suds in the tub caressing…

“I made you a cup of vanilla rooibos, if you want or need to drink something hot,” Yuzu said.

Javier’s favorite infusion.

“Of course I do.”

Yuzu ran out of the bathroom, came back with a big, smoking hot mug. Its scent was sweet, and so comforting.

“I put it here, so you can take it whenever you want,” Yuzu said, pulling a stool close to the tub and placing the mug on it. Then he straightened up and looked at Javier. Javier noticed he was torturing his inner cheeks with his teeth. “I leave you alone,” Yuzu finally added, and turned around.

“No, wait,” Javier said. Yuzu stopped on the threshold. “Don’t you want to know how things went? Stay here.”

“I do, but there’s no hurry. You are so tired, we can…”

“Please.”

Yuzu walked back and sat on his knees beside the tub, close to Javier’s face.

“So… first of all, the basics,” Javier said. “Skinny is okay, as much as a junkie with his withdrawal symptoms can be. And nobody can connect what happened to you or to the club.” Yuzu’s lips trembled. He didn’t say anything. “It came out that Skinny… by the way, his name’s Thomas Bell… well, nine months ago he ran away from his rehab, and since then his parents haven’t known anything about him. Okay, not really. He’d been caught stealing once, but when they came to Toronto from Ottawa – cause they’re from Ottawa – he’d been released already and they couldn’t find him. Now they came here on time, though, so I guess Skinny will go back to rehab. He won’t run away again, hopefully.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No, he was sedated. But I don’t think he’ll bother us again. We saved his life, didn’t we?”

Yuzu nodded. They didn’t speak for a while, Javier sipping the infusion and Yuzu sitting silently by his side.

“I’m sorry, Javi,” he said finally. His eyes were dry, but his voice was soaked with tears. “If it wasn’t me…”

“ _If it wasn’t me_ what? Skinny would have not tried to rob the Cricket Club?” Javier interrupted him. “Provided that he was _able_ to rob. To me, he just looked desperate.”

“It could have ended badly anyway.”

“I don’t think so. Well, it could have ended very badly for _him_ , so maybe it was for the best that he tried to rob the Cricket. At least he wasn’t alone, when he collapsed.”

Yuzu nodded again, then shook his head. “Okay, but he chose to rob the _Cricket_ , of all places. If I didn’t work th…”

“If you didn’t work there, he might have tried to rob the club anyway. He, or someone else.” Javier put the mug back on the stool and took Yuzu’s chin between his fingers to make him raise his eyes. “Yuzu, the Cricket is a place for people who have some money. Who have _lots of_ money, comparing to someone like Skinny. Do you really think that it was never, ever robbed?” Javier left Yuzu’s chin to stroke his cheek. “Don’t blame yourself when you’re not to blame, please.”

Yuzu leaned in his touch, and Javier felt his heart quiver like every time he touched Yuzu’s silky skin.

“You’re not mad at me, then?” Yuzu asked in a whisper.

“No, I’m not mad at you,” Javier said, and thought: I’m in love with you, and I never loved anyone so much – so intensely, and definitively, and ferociously.

Yuzu took Javier’s hand between his palms, covering it with light pecks, and Javier’s heart quivered again.

“Everything’s clean,” Yuzu said. “Towels, pajamas, bedsheets. Do you want to enjoy your bath a little bit longer, or…”

“No, I just want to sleep.”

“Of course.” Yuzu helped him to get out of the tub and rub himself dry; he waited for him while he was brushing his teeth and wearing crispy clean pajamas, then took him to bed and tucked him in. Everything was soft, scented, and Javier moaned with pleasure.

“You don’t come to bed?” he asked as he realized that Yuzu just stood by his side, fully dressed.

Yuzu looked down. “I thought I could sleep in my room,” he said, “this way, you can…”

“Please.” Javier took Yuzu’s hand. “I sleep much better with you than without you.”

Yuzu smiled, finally: that blinding smile of his, lighting up his eyes and digging a dimple in his right cheek. Javier wondered how he could ever give up on Yuzuru.

“Give me just a moment,” Yuzu said, and squeezed briefly Javier’s hand before letting it go and running to the bathroom.

Less than five minutes after, they were lying together in the dark. Javier, his head on Yuzu’s shoulder and an arm resting across Yuzu’s chest, felt Yuzu’s chin on his hair, Yuzu’s arms around his torso. It was beautiful, being lulled by the delicate rises and falls of Yuzu’s chest; it was necessary. I don’t want to give up on him, Javier thought, I _can’t_. But he had to… what if Yuzuru would understand? What if Yuzuru would forgive him, would _stay_? Maybe… no, there was no _maybe_. Yuzuru would understand, sooner or later, but he wouldn’t forgive Javier, he wouldn’t stay.

Javier felt Yuzu’s arms get heavier, Yuzu’s breath get deeper. He was sleeping.

“I love you,” Javier whispered, only to know how it tasted: it tasted good, despite everything. “I love you,” he said once again, overwhelmed by the force of his feelings.

*****

Like every day at lunch time, Yuzu was helping Max at the Cricket Club cafe: he took the orders to the customers, cleared and cleaned the tables. So graceful, polite and effective that everyone asked him to stay for a moment, to chat a little bit.

“Javi, are you with us?”

Brian’s voice made him start back to himself: he was on the ice. Practicing his short program’s step sequence. Okay.

“Yes, sorry.”

“Don’t apologize and work on those edges, please. Deeper, okay? Deeper.”

Working on his edges. Okay. And on his knees, his balance, his everything: in two days he would be in Shanghai, competing at Words, no less than for the gold medal. Yuzu walked into the rink and to the ice bucket to fill it, then filled all the tissue-boxes too. Their eyes met, and Yuzu gave Javier the special smile he saved for him only, a smile that seemed to say: I’m happy because you’re here, and because you’re happy with me. Subjugated, Javier smiled back. Then he saw Yuzu’s eyes move to the other skaters, to their exercises, and shine with longing, and regret. Yuzu knew as well as Javier did that his place was there, on the ice. If only he had stopped punishing himself, if only… but he didn’t want to. That’s why Javier was the only one who could…

“Javi!” Brian exclaimed. “May you please take your head back to Planet Earth, please?” His coach looked more concerned than angry and was staring at him.

“I’m sorry, Brian, really.” Javier opened his arms. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, I just can’t focus.”

Yuzu was joking and laughing with Nam at the edge of the rink, acting in a way that would look slightly flirting if it wasn’t so endearingly childish.

“Jesus, Javi, you have it bad, mhm?”

Javier took his eyes off of Yuzu and back to his coach: Brian was looking at him with a fatherly smile on his lips. Javier felt his cheeks blush.

“Is it so obvious?” he muttered.

Brian nodded. “I’m afraid everyone can see it, it is so…. _huge_ ,” he said. He chuckled. “Funny, isn’t it? You’ve always had girlfriends, and then the love of your life turned out to be a man.”

The love of my life, Javier silently repeated to himself.

“Brian, can we talk?” he asked after a moment.

“Sure.”

“Not here. In your office, or in a more… private place than the rink?”

His couch looked puzzled. “Well… yes, of course. We can go to my office right after your practice, but… what’s so important that it needs a private place to be discussed?”

“Yuzu,” Javier said, then swallowed. “Yuzu is so important.”

*****

It was six o’clock in the morning, and a fragile promise of light gave the dark outside a milky nuance. Like the eyes of an old man, Javier thought.

He had seen so many digits on his alarm. Three a.m., four, five. He might have had some sleep, here and there, anyway he hadn’t realized.

“Javi…” He felt Yuzu’s body pressed against his, Yuzu’s lips on the back of his neck, a small soft hand starting to delicately massage his hip. Javier squeezed his eyes shut. “You can’t sleep tonight, mhm?”

“No,” Javier sighed. “I’m sorry, I must be very annoying.”

“I can sleep tomorrow, but what about you?” Yuzu rubbed his nose against Javier’s nape. “In a few hours you have to fly to Shanghai, Javi. Jesus, in a few hours you have to win Worlds!”

You should have to fly to Shanghai too, Javier thought. He turned to Yuzu, put his arms around him and buried his face in the crook of Yuzu’s neck. God, Yuzu’s smell, so sweet and peppered at the same time. He was going to miss it terribly.

“What if I won’t win?” he asked.

He was going to miss it forever.

“Oh no, no way,” Yuzu said, his cheek on Javi’s hair. “You _will_ win.”

“Okay, then: what if I win?”

“Well, you become a legend: an ice skating world champion coming from _Spain_? It will be more than a simple victory, it will be… _epic_.”

Javier had to chuckle.

“Therefore, as a proper hero, you won’t have a single moment for yourself,” Yuzu went on. “Interviews, fame, glory. Everyone will want you. And I’ll watch you from here, with tears in my eyes and Effie in my lap, thinking: Unbelievable, that knight in shining armor lives with me.”

In different circumstances Javier would have chuckled again, but now he didn’t feel like. He felt like hugging Yuzu and never letting him go.

“You shouldn’t watch me from here,” he said instead. “You should compete against me.”

Yuzu stiffened in Javier’s arms. He didn’t reply.

“I will spend much time in Japan, in the next months,” Javier said with a sigh. “First of all, if I’m going to win Worlds I will skate in Tokyo, at the gala exhibition of the World Team Trophy. Middle April. Then, there are the ice shows. Fantasy On Ice will go on until June.”

Yuzu was lying motionless, still stiff.

“I wish you could travel,” Javier said, reaching for Yuzu’s cheek and caressing it. “I wish you were ready to go back to Japan.” It was like Yuzu didn’t even breathe, and Javier felt that no, he couldn’t share his last hours with Yuzu like this. He looked into Yuzu’s eyes, darker than ever in the pale light of the early morning. “I wish I didn’t have to spend two months without you,” he said.

And Yuzu finally mellowed out, and smiled, and ran his thumb on Javier’s lips. “Effie and I will be here, waiting for you,” he said, his voice gentle like a breeze on a wheat field. “With open arms and, well, open paws.”

No, you won’t, Javier thought, swallowing to push down the knot of sorrow clenching his throat. Yuzu’s face was white and shining like a pearl now, at the center of the black halo of his hair, and his eyes were two black holes that could capture you and make you lose any notion of space and time. Javier leaned in and kissed him, deeply, slowly, exploring with care and patience every corner of his mouth. When they parted, Javier pulled the bedsheet away. Yuzu’s body was white and shining too, and Javier started to run it all with his lips and hands. Yuzu’s Adam’s apple, bulging in his long neck; his collarbones, his nipples, the vertical groove of his abs, the two moles on his left hip – one big, one small, a planet and its satellite. The tender skin of his inner thighs and behind his knees, his slender ankles, his insteps… then Javier climbed meticulously back to Yuzu’s mouth, to another, endless kiss, before nestling his face in the crook of Yuzu’s neck and closing his eyes. He felt content. He felt sad. He felt in love, and guilty. Worn out.

“Now try to sleep, Javi,” Yuzuru whispered. “I will look after your anxiety, okay? While you’re sleeping.”

Javier nodded, holding Yuzu as tight as he could without hurting them both.

*****

It happened after the first practice in Shanghai, when Javier walked out of the locker room and Brian was standing in the hallway with a serious look on his face. Javier knew what his couch was going to tell him even before Brian opened his mouth to talk.

“Javi, I spoke with Mrs. Kobayashi from the Japan Skating Federation,” he said. “She’s waiting for you.”

Javier had to lean against the wall, his legs shaking.

“Let’s go,” he said as soon as he could utter the words.

They spoke on the phone and texted to each other.

After every practice, after the short program and after the free skate.

Javier won the World Championships.

Yuzuru on the phone sounded so happy, so proud.

But he didn’t answer Javier’s text after the gala practice. And he didn’t answer Javier’s call before the gala. When Javier called him after the gala, Yuzu’s phone was off.

Javier looked for Mrs Kobayashi and asked her.

Yes, the JSF had gotten in touch with Hanyu-san.

Javier nodded and leaned against the wall behind him.

So now Yuzu knew.

So Yuzu wouldn’t answer Javier’s calls ever again.

*****

When Javier slipped the key into the hole and realized that the door wasn’t locked, for a moment he was caught by a wild, crazy hope. Maybe Yuzu wasn’t gone; maybe he was angry, of course, but he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, to listen to Javier’s reasons… as soon as he stepped in, though, he lost any hope he could have nurtured.

Excluding Effie, who came and rubbed against Javier’s calves purring loudly, the flat was silent, empty despite all the furniture, cold despite the heating system. That was not a home anymore: it looked, and felt, like a grave.

Then Javier started to notice the details: Yuzu’s boots were not by the door; on the couch, the Winnie The Pooh blanket was missing, just like Yuzu’s jacket and scarf on the rack.

Yuzu’s smell was missing.

Javier took off his shoes and jacket, took Effie in his arms, left his baggage by the door and walked to the bedroom, unsure whether he should take a bath or some pills to sleep for weeks – then he saw _him_ , through the open door of _his_ room, and felt a crack in his own heart.

Yuzu was sitting on the bare mattress of his bed, his jacket beside him and his shoes near the blue wooden crate that he used as a nightstand. Javier stopped on the threshold, clinging on to Effie as if she was the one with some balance left between them.

All the room was as bare as the mattress.

“Hi, Yuzu,” Javier greeted. He couldn’t recognize his own voice, hoarse with tension and dread.

“It’s three days that I don’t live here anymore,” Yuzu began, without looking at him. “I come here to feed Effie, of course. And now I’m here because I can’t leave without saying thank you.”

Javier’s heart seemed to stop beating. “ _Thank you_ for what?” he asked with that strange voice.

Yuzu kept not looking at him. “You hosted me, welcome me. You gave me a job and a place to live, you’ve been a friend. You saved me. I will thank you forever for that, Javier.”

_Javier_.

“Yuzu, please, don’t…”

“When did you decide to get in touch with the Japan Skating Federation, Javier?”

Yuzu finally looked at him. There was such a deep disappointment in his eyes that for a moment Javier was breathless, speechless, like he’d been punched in his stomach.

“When Skinny attacked us at the club,” he answered finally.

“And you talked with the Federation when you were in Shanghai,” Yuzu reasoned. A shudder shook him from head to toes. “So, for about a week, when you were still here in Toronto, you lied to me. You knew you were going to do something that would change my life forever, but for a whole week you pretended nothing was happening.” He closed his eyes, slowly. “You talked to me, and kissed me, and… for a week.” The half laughter coming out of Yuzu’s lips was the bitterest sound Javier had ever heard. “I thought you were nervous because of Words, and I did all I could to comfort you.”

“Yuzu.” Javier put Effie down and rushed to crouch in front of him. “Yuzu, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to lie to you, really, and if it took me such a long time to make up my mind to…”

“It took you a very short time, it seems to me.”

“No!” Javier put his hand on Yuzu’s knee, but Yuzu pulled abruptly back. “It was months, _months_ that I was thinking about it, and you know it,” Javier went on, his useless hands in his lap. “I tried a million times to talk you into it, to reason with you about it, but… but you didn’t want to, you kept hearing no reason, and when Skinny attacked us…”

“When Skinny attacked us, you thought that… that _you_ had the right to make the most important decision of _my_ life.”

“How long do you think you could go on _without_ making that decision? If I wasn’t there, you would have taken Skinny to the hospital, right?, and the truth would have come to the surface. In the worst way possible, maybe even in the worst _place_ possible, because at the hospital they would have called the police, and who are you, for the Canadian police? An illegal immigrant, maybe. Or what if you had a serious asthma attack at the Cricket Club when I wasn’t there? Brian and Tracy would have called an ambulance. Or, to put it simply, what if you and I wanted to go on holiday? To… to go visit my family in Spain?” For a moment Yuzu’s eyes, that so far had been staring at the void beyond Javier, focused on him, and Javier saw the pain behind the disappointment, the wound behind the rage, and felt a stab in his guts. “But even if nothing like that had ever happened…” Javier began again. “Every day at the club, I saw you. I saw how you couldn’t wait to skate. To be on the ice with us. Because you _are_ one of us, Yuzu! Fuck, you’re a skater! How long do you think you could endure to… _not_ to be yourself?”

“I was happy!” Yuzu cried, jumping to his feet and starting to pace the floor. “I…”

“It was just an illusion!” Javier stood up as well. “You’ll never be happy, _never_ , if you don’t leave your sense of guilt behind and you don’t accept who you are!”

“I had a home!” Yuzu insisted, deaf, desperate. “I had a home,” he said again, more lowly. “I had a job, I had… I had a family.” He looked at Javier, and Javier saw the tears in his eyes, heard them in his voice. “I wasn’t alone anymore. I could start again, I could…” Yuzu pressed the heels of his hands on his eyes, but he couldn’t stop the tears from running down his cheeks. “You thought otherwise, though. You thought it was better for me to be alone.”

“I thought it was better for you to be _free_ ,” Javier tried; but he felt too miserable, too scared to put some energy into his words.

Yuzu didn’t speak; he just looked at Javier for a long while. Look at me forever, Javier prayed, look at me until the end of the world and don’t you ever go away.

“Why, Javi?” Yuzu asked finally, gently, and when Javier heard that soft _Javi_ his irrational, wild hope roared again inside his soul. He swallowed, breathed deeply once, twice.

“Because I love you,” he then said.

Yuzu flinched. His eyes were wide with shock, his mouth open and trembling. For a few seconds. Then he shut his mouth and clenched his jaw, wiping the tears away from his face.

“This isn’t love,” he said, “this is… possession, dominance, power, as you wish. But not love.”

Yuzu walked around Javier to take and put on his jacket and shoes, then walked around him again, heading for the door. He stopped on the threshold and looked at Javier. Disappointment and sadness behind a slab of steel.

“Thank you again for everything, Javier. Good-bye.” He walked out without waiting for Javier to say good-bye in his turn.

Javier heard him open and close the front door, heard Effie meow.

He saw that Yuzu had left on a shelf his keys – and his old, rusty skate blades. Javier took them in his hands. They were cold, their edges blunted.

Javier pressed Yuzu’s blades on his forehead, and cried.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He still didn’t know whether his life would be good or bad, full of love or loneliness; but it would be true. He didn’t need to run away and hide, he didn’t need Blade anymore.  
> Now, he was free.

The red light of the camera went off, and Yuzuru sighed deeply: he felt as if it was the very first time he could catch his breath since the interview started.

“Okay, stop,” the director’s voice – as Yuzuru had learned – said through the speakers.

All the lights in the studio went on and everybody started vigorously clapping their hands. Yuzuru stood up from the armchair where he had been sitting for what felt like centuries and bowed, smiling awkwardly to the cameramen, the studio assistants and all the unknown people in front of him. The typical Japanese politeness: outstanding, nearly embarrassing. He had quite forgotten it.

“Thank you, Hanyu-senshu.” The journalist, a former tennis champion who had become a considerate, sensitive interviewer, bowed to him.

“Thank _you_ for asking me to tell my story,” Yuzuru said.

“It’s such an extraordinary story. So, _so_ moving. I’m sure you’ll become a model for every young Japanese and a big help for the Miyagi Prefecture and all the areas dealing with reconstruction.”

A formal sentence, of course, but Shuzo Matsuoka’s eyes were bright and truthful. Yuzuru smiled hesitantly. Maybe it wasn’t just a question of Japanese politeness, maybe this journalist and the studio staff had some admiration for him, some… respect?

“Excuse-me so much, Hanyu-senshu, but we need to go.”

Yoshiko Kobayashi was always able to appear and disappear as suddenly as a magician. Always smiling, always looking a bit intimidated by the tall world looming over her small stature. Yuzuru liked her a lot.

“Of course. I’m coming.”

Yuzuru bowed one last time to Shuzo Matsuoka, bowed to the assistant who had just given him a bouquet of flowers from the production, and followed Kobayashi-san outside.

“What an amazing interview,” she said when they were in the Federation’s car.

“Really?” Yuzuru hesitated. He wasn’t sure whether that interview had been good or not. He had spent a sleepless night thinking about what to say at his first, important meeting with the media, and decided he would not lie. He would only omit some details: some of the things he’d had to do in order to survive, and his relationship with Javi.

Javi.

Apart from that, though, he would tell the truth: if he had to be Yuzuru Hanyu for real, he couldn’t rebuild his identity on the friable foundations of lies.

“Oh yes, really,” Kobayashi-san said. “I was so touched by your words.” She swept away from her face a tear, or maybe just the memory of the tears that brimmed her eyes while she was listening to his story. “You are such a great hope for Japan, in these hard times,” she added.

“A hope? I ran away when Japan needed all the help that…”

“You survived,” Kobayashi-san corrected him, blushing for daring to interrupt him. “You were hit in the worst way, but you survived, and you skate like… of course you are a hope for all of us, Hanyu-senshu.”

I don’t want to be a hope for anyone, Yuzuru thought, nor a symbol, I just want to… what? Skate? That was the only reason why he could tolerate loneliness, confusion, fear: of course he wanted to skate. Did he want something else, something more?

_Javi_.

Yuzuru leaned against the window.

*****

“So, this is our proposition: there are great expectations about you, Hanyu-senshu, that’s why we wish to invite you, right now already, to _four_ shows of the Fantasy On Ice series, even if we never saw you skating in front of an audience. Kobayashi-san says you’re great and we totally trust Kobayashi-san. Then, let’s see how people react to your performance at the World Team Trophy, let’s see if… if there’s a _feeling_ between you and the audience, so to say. At that point, we could invite you to _all_ the twelve shows of FaOI, if you agree. Of course we’ll make a decision together, so to say. What do you think about?”

“Alright, yes.”

“Wonderful! So now we can talk about your contract, can’t we?”

Yuzuru didn’t talk a lot, most of all he listened. Transports, transfers, board and lodging would be paid by the production, then he would get money for each show: Yuzuru had never had or heard about so much money before.

“Do you agree, Hanyu-senshu?”

“I agree, but I have two conditions. First: if the feeling between me and the audience is so great that you’re going to hire me for all the FaOI shows, I want some more money.”

“I think… I think we can talk about it, so to say.”

“Second: you won’t give that money to me. You’ll give it to Sendai, my town, for the reconstruction. All of that money.”

Silence – although Yuzuru was quite sure Kobayashi-san had let out kind of a whispered scream.

“Fernández-senshu was right, then.”

Yuzuru felt the usual spasm to his heart, just like every time someone mentioned Javi.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice less steady than he would have liked it to sound.

“We got in touch with him, obviously. He’s the world champion, he will be at each and every show of FaOI, so to say.”

Of course. Right, he was going to meet Javi again. Actually, they were going to meet sooner, at the World Team Trophy: Javi was invited to take part in the exhibition gala.

“Fernández-senshu praised you with great enthusiasm, so to say. He said you are an outstanding skater and a generous person. Today we are having solid proof of what he told us.”

Yuzuru was looking at his hands. They were trembling.

“Well, Hanyu-senshu, I think we agree about everything, don’t we? Then…”

“So to say.”

“I’m sorry?”

Kobayashi-san chuckled as quietly as she could.

“I mean, of course,” Yuzuru said. “Of course.”

*****

Waking up was probably the hardest moment of the day. Opening his eyes and realizing he was in a still unknown bed, without Javi and his warmth, without Javi’s skin, and breath, and heartbeat. For at least ten minutes Yuzuru laid there without moving, stubbornly determined to pretend he was still sleeping. The day ahead of him felt like an insurmountable mountain, while his loneliness was an ogre sitting astride him – so heavy – and whispering into his ear with a noxious breath: You are alone, you will always be alone, the most you can hope for is having some fans, not some friends, not a family. Not Javi.

Finally he got on his feet, finding himself in the studio apartment that the Federation had arranged for him in Nagoya, and he pushed himself to have breakfast – even though the most of the time he just took a shower, dressed up and went out to some bar, trying not to think of the flat he still considered as his _home_. The defective toaster that spat out bread with the force of a hammer thrower. Effie rubbing against his calves, waiting for her food, and Javi’s sleepy eyes behind his glasses – Javi, Javi, always Javi and only Javi. The more Yuzuru thought of what he had left behind, the more he felt the need to run away from the studio.

Then – luckily – his day began, and it was always so busy that Yuzuru didn’t have any time to wallow. Bureaucratic troubles, interviews, meetings. While he was slowly finding his identity, the Federation was creating his character: the boy who survived, the skating prodigy who had denied himself out of grief but then had been brave enough to come back. It wasn’t a fake storytelling: it was the truth, even if polished for the media and the ice skating audience, but Yuzuru felt uncomfortable anyway, kind of disconnected from a biography that belonged to him and yet was becoming an unfamiliar story; and in the worst moments he nearly missed Blade, his freedom to be no one at all.

Then, though, there was his training.

Very much intense, exhausting. On ice and off ice, alone and with other skaters. Jumps, transitions, skating skills, choreographies. Nagoya skating school’s training methods were different from Toronto Cricket Club’s, but Yuzuru had no way to think about which one he liked most; he was not even sure if he could describe as _thinking_ the mishmash that swirled across his head and that he had no energy to reorganize. And yet, when he was on the ice everything disappeared, pressed in a corner of his mind and heart, much less important than the simple act of skating. Sure, there were moments when some image of the past flashed in front of his eyes, and it was hard to ignore them. His mother filming him from the bleachers. Nanami Abe-sensei leaning on the rink board. Javi praising Yuzuru’s triple Axel, proud and loving. In those moments, though, Yuzuru kept on skating, and those images were bearable, he could live with them: his mother and Nanami-sensei were dead and Javi wasn’t by his side anymore, but they had helped him being himself, and he could find them in the way he looked, thought, behaved and moved. His life was still lonely, still sad, but at least, yes – at least it made some sense.

“Have you been in Sendai?” the interviewer asked, with the same, seraphic smile she had given him when she’d asked how his training was going.

Yuzuru felt he couldn’t breathe anymore. Come on, he said to himself, you knew this question was coming, sooner or later. “No,” he said. He hesitated, then he chose, as usual, to tell the truth. “I know that I must go back to Sendai, I _want_ to. But… but I also know that it will be a challenge, for me. It will be very sad. And… well, I must confess I don’t feel ready, not yet. I’ve been back in Japan for two weeks only, and I’m… overwhelmed. Everybody’s so interested, so willing to listen to me, and… yes, I’m overwhelmed. So full of emotions. I spend my days with Japanese people, speaking my language, and… and my memories, all the memories I have are so alive, so… intrusive. I need, I still need to get ready. To prepare some more. I hope that people from Sendai can understand and wait for me. When I feel ready, or… at least, a bit less _not-ready_ , then I’ll go there.”

The interviewer nodded in understanding, but when their meeting ended Yuzuru asked for the restroom anyway, ran in a stall and brought his inhaler to his lips.

How hard it was, to be Yuzuru Hanyu.

*****

Yuzuru got out of the car, retrieved his trolley and sport bag from the trunk, and started walking toward the ice hall. He felt as if he was captured in slow motion. Was it because he was counting every step, maybe?

Seven, eight, nine, ten steps toward the entrance.

The gala practice was due in twenty minutes. In five, he would be in a locker room full of skaters. Famous, _true_ skaters.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two steps.

Then, with all those famous, true skaters, he would get to the rink and practice. Side glances to the reborn Japanese _enfant prodige_. Whispered comments – some good, some (many?) bad. _What is he doing, here? He’s never competed anywhere… what does he fancy himself to be, the star of the show?_

Thirty-five, thirty-six steps.

In the locker room, on the ice, he would meet Javi again.

Yuzuru was at the entrance of the ice hall, clenching his trolley’s handle so tightly that his knuckles were nearly transparent.

Javi was not yet in the locker room, and Yuzuru felt so disappointed and relieved that he didn’t even wonder how he could be both at the same time.

“Good morning,” he greeted, with an off-key, high-pitched voice. He realized he had spoken in English – just like when he walked into the locker room at the Cricket Club – and added hastily a Japanese, even more off-key greeting.

“Good morning,” many skaters greeted him, in both languages.

Oh, God. There were Maxim Kovtun, Sergei Voronov...

“Hi, Yuzu!” Takahito Mura walked to him, grinning. “How are you doing? Ready for your debut?” he asked, putting his arm around Yuzuru’s shoulders.

Yuzuru smiled, grateful. He had met Takahito just a couple of times, since he trained in Okayama, but he’d been nice and sympathetic. “Not really,” Yuzuru answered.

Takahito patted him on his shoulder, then he turned to the other skaters. “Lads, he’s Yuzuru Hanyu. He trains with Mao in Nagoya, and believe me, watch him carefully when he skates because it is definitely worth it.”

Yuzuru muttered something under his breath and bowed.

“Oh, sure, Javi told me about you.” A guy with long hair and a big, open smile stood up from the bench and held his hand out for him. “Jason,” he said, “Jason Brown.”

Yuzuru knew perfectly well who that guy was. Did he have to say it? “Nice to meet you,” he muttered again, shaking Jason’s hand.

“Hi! Sergei.”

“Well, we know each other already…”

“Sure! Hi, Nam.”

“I’m Florent, nice to meet you.”

Yuzuru kept shaking hands, bowing and muttering, feeling his cheeks hot in front of all those skaters he was used to admiring from afar. Only Takahito’s hand on his shoulder anchored him to reality. And in a few minutes he was supposed to do the same with all the girls? Holy crap.

“Thank you, it’s so nice to meet you all,” he found the strength to say, without muttering too much, when all the handshakes and introductions were over. Kovtun was staring at him with a smile, and Yuzuru swallowed. “Well, it’s more than nice, I’m so…”

“Yes yes yes I know, I’m late, sorry guys,” a voice behind him said while a door went open. A voice Yuzuru knew very well in each and every of its nuances, from hopelessness to pleasure. A voice he had desperately missed and he was scared to hear.

Yuzuru turned around.

Javi.

Sleepy eyes behind his glasses. A bit thinner than fifteen days ago. Was it only fifteen days, since they…? It felt like a lifetime.

“Javi!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the worrrrrld champioooon!”

“The world champion of laziness!”

“Yuzuru’s savior!”

“Ja-vi! Ja-vi!”

Yuzuru stopped staring at Javi and focused his gaze on the rest of the cast. Everybody was screaming, cheering. Palpably waiting for _something_ between Javi and him – a proper greeting, or a hug, maybe: all in all, they were supposed to be great friends.

“Hello, Javi.”

“Hi, Yuzu.”

Tension, in Javi’s voice and eyes. Guilt. Affection. Ah, if only Javi hadn’t done what he had.

Yuzuru took a step forward, opened his arms, and Javi crashed against him, letting fall down the cup of coffee he was carrying in his hand. All the skaters around them started clapping their hands: that was the last thing Yuzuru heard before the world shrank to the man in his arms. For a moment, he couldn’t help melting in the embrace he had missed so much, listening to Javi’s heart – it was beating as fast as the wings of a hummingbird – and feeling Javi’s warm breath on his ear. Then, it came all back to his mind: his phone ringing, the words _unknown number_ on the screen, that voice speaking Japanese (“Good morning, I’m Yoshiko Kobayashi, Japan Skating Federation”) and destroying all that was important to him. Yuzuru felt a wave of anger, pain and betrayal hit him, and pulled away abruptly.

Javi looked at him with so much hurt and guilt in his eyes that Yuzuru gasped.

“I’m such a disaster,” Javi said, leaning to pick the cup up, his voice a bit too low, a bit trembling. He straightened up. “Okay, I’m going to find something to wipe this mess away.”

“Are you trying to be even later than usual?” Nam mocked him.

Javi gave him a tired smile. “I was late, but earlier than I usually am,” he said. “I have a reputation to defend, haven’t I?” He walked out of the room.

Yuzuru sat near Takahito and took his skates out of his trolley. _Javi’s_ old skates, actually; he still wore them, waiting for the skates the Federation had ordered for him. He had hidden under a layer of black, thick marker the Spanish flags on the boots – each stroke of marker, a slash in his heart.

“You okay?” Takahito asked, some concern in his tone.

“Yeah,” Yuzuru said, “just a bit nervous.” He leaned down to put his skates on, so that neither Takahito nor someone else could see his face.

He had no idea how he could survive the whole day.

For a handful of seconds, Yuzuru thought he could make it.

The gala practice had been good. He had learned the group choreography, took part in all the antics and all the shenanigans, tried to be friendly and active without looking like he wanted to be in the spotlight. He had skated his program feeling all eyes on him. He had somehow endured Javi’s presence.

Now it was time to go back to the hotel. Time to be alone for a while, finally. Yes, perhaps he could make it…

Then Kobayashi-san was in front of him, together with the gala director, both of them smiling.

“Hanyu-senshu, Kimura-san came up with a wonderful idea,” Kobayashi-san announced, and Yuzuru knew instantly that he wasn’t going to consider it wonderful.

“I thought,” the director explained, “that you and Fernández-senshu have this very special bond, as everybody knows by now… including the audience here at the World Team Trophy. So, it would be great if you two introduced each other. Fernández-senshu will introduce you before your performance, and you’ll introduce him before his.”

“Isn’t it the best idea?” Kobayashi-san’s smile was blinding.

Yuzuru had to lean against the wall not to fall down.

They decided what to say. They decided that Javi would speak English and Yuzuru would translate his words in Japanese, while Yuzuru would speak Japanese but end his speech with a sentence in English: _Please welcome Javier Fernández_.

They were sitting each at one end of the same bench in the locker room, as if they feared that sitting closer could burn them. They hadn’t even said _hi_ when they had met, and they weren’t looking at each other. As quick and effective as possible.

When they finished, Yuzuru was beyond tired and dizzy. He stood up, his legs moving eagerly toward the door, the hotel, and an all-erasing deep sleep. “Okay,” he said, “see you in four ho…”

“Yuzu, wait. Please.”

Yuzuru stopped and turned to Javi. His eyes were twinkling with pain and love, and it was unbearable.

“I’d just like to…” Javi hesitated. He took a deep breath, as if saying a whole sentence was particularly challenging. “I’d just like to know how you are.”

I should turn and walk out, Yuzuru thought.

“How am I,” he repeated instead. Javi was the first person asking him that question since he was back in Japan, and Yuzuru realized he had never asked himself either. “I don’t know. Everything is new, is… too much. I don’t have time enough to try and figure it out, I don’t have _energy_ enough. So many things to do, so many people around me, even though I’m always alone, actually. I don’t have a home, a town, a _life_. I only have the ice. I learned six choreographies in ten days. I sleep and eat, I run from an office to another, I give interviews and listen to what the JSF tells me, I skate. That’s all.”

“How do you feel, when you skate?”

Yuzuru didn’t need to think about it: this time, he knew the answer even before the question. “I feel... right, “ he said. “I _am_ right, when I skate.”

“You are yourself, maybe,” Javier whispered, with an almost fearful look on his face, like he didn’t dare to ask or say anything to Yuzuru.

“I don’t know who I am.” Yuzuru sat down on the bench opposite to the one where Javi was. “I feel like… like the character of a comic strip. The… the cartoonist drew me but he still hasn’t drawn the rest of the page, so there’s only me and I… I am lingering in this endless white, and…” Yuzuru stood up again, turning his back on Javi. He couldn’t take the look on Javi’s face, so insecure and painful and loving, it made him feel like slapping Javi; or like holding him tight. “It’s four years that I’m… lost in all that white. And it’s fifteen days that… I don’t know. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that the cartoonist is finally drawing something around me. Sometimes the page around me is so white, and so wide, that I feel… I’m not sure which is right or left, high or low, I… lost my balance, and…”

“You will make it, Yuzu.” Javi stood up and walked to him. “I never met anybody with a stronger _identity_ than yours.” Javi raised his hand, perhaps to reach for Yuzuru, and Yuzuru took a step backwards. Javi stopped, tucked his hands in his jeans pockets, and nodded without looking at him. “You’ll make it,” he said again.

Yuzuru crossed his arms. His chest was aching, cram-full with too many opposite feelings. “Lucky you,” he said, anger and pain bleeding out of the wound Javi had inflicted on him. “You are so sure, you always know _everything_ , uh? That must be the reason why you forced me to…”

“I didn’t force you to do anything,” Javi interrupted him. “You could say no to the Japanese Federation. You _could_. But you didn’t even think about it, did you?”

Yuzuru lowered his eyes. How he wished Javi wasn’t right. “I would like to be so… so firmly convinced about everything as you are.”

His voice sounded sharp, unpleasant, but Javi was still looking at him with softness on his face. And wistfulness. “I would like it too,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Yuzuru snapped. He felt like screaming. “You lied to me, you… you betrayed me, and you’re not even sure it was the right thing to do??”

Javi smiled sadly. “I’m _almost_ sure,” he said. “And since twenty days I can’t sleep because of that _almost_.” Javi walked back to his bench, picked his sport bag up and threw it on his shoulder. “But I guess we will find out in a few hours,” he went on, “as soon as you’ll be skating in front of an audience for the first time. Right? Good luck, Yuzu.” Not glancing even once at Yuzuru, Javi walked out of the locker room.

Yuzuru sat down again on the bench, his heart pounding wildly and his head spinning.

Good luck to you, Javi, he wished silently, feeling the first tears run down his cheeks.

There had been not a single day, during those four years, when Yuzuru hadn’t tried to remember how it felt to skate in front of an audience. And he thought he remembered. Of course, before his asthma got worse he was too young to perform very often, but he did, and he thought he knew how it felt.

He was wrong.

Now that Javi had introduced him – and couldn’t help touching Yuzuru’s nape for a second, leaving flames on his skin –, now that the lights had gone down and only a followspot was lighting him up in the middle of the rink, Yuzuru waited for the music to start with his heart jumping in his throat with every beat, as if it was the very first time that he skated with so many people around him. All in all, though, it _was_ the very first time.

_Requiem of Heaven and Earth_.

As soon as he had heard the music by Yasunobu Matsuo, Yuzuru had known that he _must_ skate to it, and now there he was. A few steps, as if he was walking through the devastation left by the earthquake, then he lay on the ice, crushed by hopelessness – but soon he stood up again, screaming against what had happened, against fate and for the dead, against the day that had destroyed his life and for the hope he could build a new one. And despite everything, despite the grief for his lost family and the squalor of the following three and a half years and the disillusion and longing for Javi, despite all the anger, pain and love he was feeling, Yuzuru also felt that everything made sense, no, even more than when he had skated _Rome+Juliet_ in front of Javi.

He was Yuzuru Hanyu, skater.

His life was, and was always going to revolve around skating. That was his deepest, most real identity. He had needed four years to find it again, after losing it, but now he knew, now he _was_. In front of an audience whose faces he could not see, but whose eyes he sensed on him; surrounded by a sound that was a mixture of music, hard ice scratching under his blades, and the gasps from the people around him; covered in sweat, and with one certainty carved in his atoms: he was Yuzuru Hanyu, skater.

He raised his eyes to the ceiling – to the sky above – and stopped in the final pose. Yuzuru Hanyu, skater, was going to use himself and his talent to show how you could fall and then stand up anyway, and emanate your own light. The music went off, leaving the arena suspended in a thick, heavy silence. Then the roar of a thunderous applause came from the bleachers, the lights went on and Yuzuru saw all the people getting to their feet to give him a standing ovation. Many people were shouting, some were even crying.

Okay, then, Yuzuru thought, smirking first and then smiling, and bowing with pride and self-confidence. Time to make his pain the foundation of his life. He still didn’t know whether his life would be good or bad, full of love or loneliness; but it would be _true_. He didn’t need to run away and hide, he didn’t need Blade anymore.

Now, he was free.

“Yuzu, can I talk to you just for a minute?”

Yuzuru stared at Javi. The world champion had skated last, then there had been the group performance; now they were all in the locker room. After Yuzuru’s _Requiem for Heaven and Earth_ , every skater had come and congratulated him. Everyone but Javi: he was nowhere to be seen.

“Javi…”

“I wouldn’t ask you, if it was not important.”

Javi kept his palms up, probably to mean he wasn’t going to touch or hurt him. Will our relationship always be like that? Yuzuru asked himself. Will we always keep our hands up, hoping the other won’t shoot first?

“Okay,” he said. “Not here, though.”

Javi nodded and they walked out, searching for a secluded place until they found a broom closet. Not so long ago, Yuzuru would have smiled: how intriguing would have been to find himself so close to Javi in the semi-darkness. Now, though, it only felt sad and a bit bleak.

Javi leaned against the wall, his hands crossed behind him, while Yuzuru stood by the door, as far as he could from Javi and the need to slap him – or hug him.

“I…” Javi began, but stopped immediately and swallowed. “In a month and a half we’ll both be skating at Fantasy On Ice,” he started again, with a low, flat voice. “So we’ll be in the same place for many hours a day, and for weeks. Is it a problem for you? Because… well, if it’s a problem for you, I can quit.”

“No, you can’t.” Yuzuru was suddenly feeling cold all over, his fingertips icy and numb, a shiver running endlessly down his spine and in his limbs. “You are the world champion.”

“That’s not important,” Javi said. He wasn’t looking at Yuzu, he was just slightly bouncing and re-bouncing his hips off his hands on the wall. “At least I could do only a few shows, not all of them.”

“But you need that money.”

“As you said, I’m the world champion. I can find another tour, for…”

“No.”

“Mhm?”

They finally looked at each other. In the dim light, Javi looked younger, vulnerable, and Yuzuru felt too cold to think lucidly; he just knew that skating in a tour with Javi would be bad, but skating in a tour _without_ Javi would be even worse.

“It’s not a problem for me, if you do all Fantasy On Ice,” Yuzuru said. “You are right, we’ll be in the same place, but it doesn’t mean we have to always be together.”

Javi flinched, his face falling for a moment. Yuzuru lowered his eyes. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s okay, Yuzu. You’re mad at me, so…”

“I’m not mad at you,” Yuzuru shook his head, “no more.” He chuckled bitterly. “You were right, you know? It was time for Yuzuru Hanyu to come back. So yes, you were right. But you were not allowed to make the most crucial decision of my life without telling me.”

“I know.” Javi nodded, then straightened up. “Okay then, we’ll meet at the first show. Where is it, in Makuhari? I can’t remember.”

“I don’t know. I just know that I will be in four shows only, and…”

“Oh, come on. After tonight they will ask you to join the whole tour.” Javi’s expression had changed: it was warmer, more alive, and Yuzuru suddenly understood.

“You watched me skate,” he said.

“Of course,” Javi nodded. “You were… I don’t know what to say. I saw you skate that run-through at the Cricket, and it was stunning, and unique. But now… your skating is complete only when you have an audience, I suppose. _You_ are complete only if you are a skater for everyone, not just for you. There are so many… facets of you.” He reached out, his trembling hand rested on Yuzuru’s cheek, and Yuzuru didn’t find the strength to pull away. “You’re such a mystery,” Javi said. “Such a beautiful, precious mystery.”

Yuzuru closed his eyes. “Javi, please,” he whispered, even though whispering felt hard and tiring like screaming. He felt Javi’s hand tuck a lock of hair behind his ear, then move away.

“Bye, Yuzu.”

Yuzuru opened his eyes and watched Javi smiling at him, opening the door and walking away.

He stood still, staring at the shut door, hoping he could see through it.

Hoping he could see Javi, again and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, at the World Team Trophy 2014 Gala Exhibition, Yuzuru performed Parisienne Walkways, but I needed him to skate a program that was more appropriate to the difficult journey he faces in this story - please forgive me!


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He should find an excuse and leave.  
> But then, every day he would walk into the breakfast room, see Yuzu sipping his green tea – his hair, shorter but even more rebellious than when he lived in Toronto, his naked calves under the shorts – and stay where he was, where Yuzu never got out of his field of vision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearly at the end of this story! About the long chapter you're about to read: you will find references to the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, to death, and an almost graphic depiction of loss and pain, so be aware. But pain and angst are about to end, I promise!

Javier thought about it every day.

He could pretend that he was not well (a nasty flu or something like that; not an injury, otherwise he would feel he was cheating) or that there was some trouble at home. He could quit Fantasy On Ice ( _I’m so sorry, hopefully I’ll come back for the last dates_ ) and take part in some other show, possibly not in Japan. Or, he could even ignore all invitations, to hell with the fucking ice shows, and go directly to Spain, to visit his family and lick his wounds. One way or another, he needed to stop seeing Yuzu every day for so many hours. It was a torment, painful, excruciating; and somehow delicious.

Show after show, Javier was witnessing, in kind of fast motion, the birth and growth of an extraordinary ice talent. Every time Yuzu entered the rink, he was more intense and more skilled than the time before, slowly but constantly regaining what he’d lost on the 11th of March 2011. The other skaters admired him, and many of them were starting to love and fear him at the same time; the audience adored him. Yuzu was born to perform, not only because he was such a fantastic showman, but because he was able to create an immediate, tight connection with the audience, a quite alchemic bond going beyond the simple ability to entertain and interact with the people. It was like the intensity Yuzu expressed when he was skating could spread all around, lighting and warming up like sunbeams the Earth and its inhabitants. Where the other skaters kept something of them hidden inside, Yuzu instead seemed to let every emotion and feeling seep out of him, meet and melt with the emotions and the feelings of his audience. It wasn’t a theatrical attitude, or simple empathy. It was compassion in its literal meaning, _passion with_ : Yuzu had so much passion, and the audience went passionate with and for him.

And show after show, from the far corner where Javier felt he must stand, he watched Yuzu bloom. He watched him move from the last to the first row in the group numbers, enjoy – and analyze, understand, use – his success to skate better and get even more successful. He watched him joke around with the other skaters, worship Plushenko and Weir and rejoice in their admiration, learn new spins from Lambiel, be friendly with everyone but always reserved, careful not to step on his colleagues’ toes.

Javier would watch Yuzu, talk and joke around with him, sticking to the role of best friends they had to play. He would perform, and thank the audience, and spend the rest of his time with the other skaters. Always watching Yuzu, with so many questions swirling in his mind: would Yuzu forgive him, sooner or later? Would they finally be what they were pretending to be – friends? And if they were going to be friends for real, would it be possible for them to be together again? At the end of the day, the issue between them was trust, not love… really? Yuzu had never said that he was in love with him. Never.

He should go on, Javier knew that. He should stop feeling that itch in his fingers every time he saw Yuzu and craved to touch him, he should sleep at night instead of staring at the empty bed next to his – what an ironic, bitter privilege it was, to have a double room on his own. He should find an excuse and leave.

But then, every day he would walk into the breakfast room, see Yuzu sipping his green tea – his hair, shorter but even more rebellious than when he lived in Toronto, his naked calves under the shorts – and stay where he was, where Yuzu never got out of his field of vision.

*****

The day when Yuzu would land it consistently, his quad Salchow would be the most beautiful in the world, even more beautiful than Javier’s. At present, though, he still could _not_ land it consistently: while all the other skaters were having a break from rehearsals, drinking some water and chatting a bit, Yuzu kept practicing that jump, and kept falling.

Javier took a deep breath, shrugged and, when Yuzu crashed his butt on the ice for the nth time, he skated to him.

“Yuzu…”

“What?” Yuzuru growled, standing up.

Javier was taken aback, but only for a second; then he gathered up his courage. “You’ll keep falling,” he said, “if you don’t stop for a moment and try to… to read the… yes, the _personality_ of this jump. The Salchow.”

Yuzu wiped the ice from his gloves. “And what kind of _personality_ is the Salchow supposed to have?”

“Well, Mr. Salchow is closed, and lazy. You _attack_ it, and it doesn’t work with it. You need to… to wait for it. The Salchow should come to you, not vice versa. It goes at its own pace, you must follow it. And feel when it finally comes to you.”

Yuzu glanced at him skeptically, but skated away and sped up. Javier could see his focus and, when Yuzu entered the jump, also the concentration to do what he had been told to. He landed a shaky quad Salchow at the second attempt, a perfect one at the fourth – high and elegant. While the others clapped their hands, Yuzu skated back to Javier. My days as world champion are about to end, Javier thought; but Yuzu was smiling at him and Javier didn’t feel concerned, he couldn’t, not in that very moment.

“Now I know why the quad Salchow is your jump,” Yuzu said. “Because it’s like you.”

“I’m not closed,” Javier protested.

“But you’re lazy.” Yuzu stuck his tongue out and skated away.

Javier stood watching him, his heart throbbing and what he suspected was an idiotic smile on his lips.

*****

There were millions of movies. When did the Lumière brothers invent cinematography, at the end of the 19th century? So there must exist _billions_ of movies. And yet, on a rainy night with no one keen to get out of the hotel, Stéphane Lambiel had invited all the cast to join him and Johnny Weir in their room and watch a movie together. _That_ movie.

_Young Frankenstein_.

Yuzu was sitting between Nobu and Shoma, far from Javier, with an unreadable expression on his face. Was he waiting for _that_ scene, as well as Javier?

There it was.

_Freddy, darling. Oh, how can I say in a few minutes what it’s taken me a lifetime to understand?_

_Won’t you try?_

_All right. You’ve got it mister. I’m yours, all of me. What else can I say_?

That scene was such a masterpiece parody of all the farewell scenes at a train station, and all the other skaters were laughing. Yuzu too? Javier couldn’t look at him. _Those_ two lines were coming.

_I hope you like old fashioned wedding._

_I prefer old fashioned wedding nights._

_Oh, you’re incorrigible._

_Does that mean you love me?_

_You bet your boots it does._

_Oh, my only love._

Here we go.

_Taffeta, darling_ , Elizabeth said in the movie. “Taffeta,” Javier said with her, and he couldn’t help but look at Yuzu. Who was looking at him.

_Taffeta, sweetheart_ , Frederick said. “Taffeta,” Yuzu said with him.

Then Javier lowered his eyes. During the whole movie, Yuzu and him didn’t look at each other again.

*****

“Javi, can we speak?”

“Sure.”

“Not here, though. Too many people. At the teahouse just outside the venue, let’s say in… at 2 p.m.?”

“Okay.”

It was a pretty English teahouse, nicely out of context in Kanazawa, and Javier perfectly knew – and feared – what Yuzu wanted to talk about: the show in Sendai that the organizers of Fantasy On Ice wanted to add at the end of the tour, considering how much success Yuzu was having. The tour manager had summoned all the skaters after the morning practice, explained the idea and asked them if they agreed. As the manager was talking, Javier had seen Yuzu grown paler and paler, and when it was time for the skaters to speak, he hastened to say that Hanyu-senshu was the only one who should make such a delicate decision: Sendai was his town, exactly, full of happy but also terrible memories, and no one should push him to go and perform there if he didn’t feel like. All the other skaters had agreed with Javier, and Yuzu had said, in a flat, weak voice, that he needed some time to make up his mind.

Which led to the two of them sitting face to face in that fancy teahouse, Javier moving restlessly his legs under the table, Yuzuru looking at him with… what? Javier felt too nervous to decipher his expression.

“So now it’s the opposite, isn’t it?” Yuzu began. “Months ago you made decisions for me and now _I_ should make decisions for you?” Yuzu’s tone wasn’t accusing and he had a quite teasing smile on his lips, but Javier felt like he was going to faint anyway.

“No!” he nearly screamed, that caught his breath and went on, calmer: “You can always say that you leave this decision to your colleagues. I didn’t want to… to…”

“Hey, it’s alright,” Yuzu interrupted him softly. “I was just kidding. Bad idea, sorry.”

Javier tried to smile, and a choked sound came out of his throat. He sipped his coffee. If you joke around with someone, he reasoned within himself, it means you don’t hate them, right?

“Actually, I wanted to thank you,” Yuzu said. “You gave me time to think about what’s better for me.” He was looking at his cup of tea, turning and turning it between his palms. “Javi, I don’t know what to do.”

Yuzu’s lower lip was trembling slightly. Javier wished he could hold Yuzu’s hands.

“I still haven’t been in Sendai,” Yuzu explained. “I know I must go there, and I do want to go there. I think about it all the time. All the time, Javi. But I don’t feel ready. Or brave enough, maybe. Now I have a chance, though, and I say to myself: No, not like this. Going back to Sendai is… too private. I can’t go there in grand style as the organizers think I should, with all the TV stations following me to the graveyard, or… but I know it’s a good chance. I mean, there will never be kind of a _right moment_ to go to Sendai.” Yuzuru put his elbows on the table and took his head in his hands. “I really don’t know what to do,” he repeated.

Javier’s heart was aching. A real, actual physical pain.

“It’s normal,” he said. “Of course you don’t know what to do, anyone would be… frozen by these doubts, Yuzu. And all the FaOI organizers would deserve a loud _fuck off_ just for thinking of making money thanks to your… situation. As you said, though, it’s a good chance. Actually, it looks almost like a sign of fate.”

Yuzu raised his head and looked at Javier. “Should I say yes, then?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yes, but under certain circumstances,” Javier replied immediately. “First: ask for a couple of days between the last show in Kobe and the one in Sendai. So you can go there _before_ us, before the organizers, before all the mess of FaOI. Go there alone, or at least with a friend, Nobu for instance, and do what you feel like to. No cameras, no people from the press. Second: say no to any media circus. No cameras following you everywhere, no public ceremonies and stuff. Say yes to only _one_ interview with a journalist you respect and trust. Third: skate in front of your people, and anyone watching you will understand you and support you.”

While Javier was speaking, Yuzu had been staring at him, serious and silent; and when Javier stopped talking, Yuzu kept staring at him for a while. Then he gave Javier a half smile, frail but emanating a softness Javier hadn’t seen since a long time. “It seems that you thought a lot about it,” Yuzu said; he looked impressed.

Javier felt his cheeks blush. “I did,” he confessed simply.

Yuzu was still staring at him. “Why, Javi?” he asked.

Javier lowered his eyes, inhaling even though his throat felt constricted. “You know why, Yuzu,” he whispered.

After less than a second, two delicate fingers took his chin and forced him to look up. Yuzu’s gaze was intense as a strong, sudden wind, and Javier felt dazed.

“Do you still love me so much?” Yuzu asked.

How those fingers burn on his skin.

“Always,” Javier answered.

Yuzu left Javier’s chin; his face crumpled, as if he had been slapped. He stood up.

“Thank you so much for your help, Javi,” he said. “I mean it.”

He walked away, and Javi stayed there, a cup of cold coffee in front of him, wondering if Yuzu had just said good-bye.

*****

It was the dead of night when there was a knock on his door.

Javier had gone back to the hotel earlier than the rest of the cast, under the pretense of a stomach ache and with the intention of taking a pill and disappearing from the world for eight hours minimum. Despite the pill, though, he’d slept only for some sporadic moment, waking up every time he changed position – and he was changing position very, very often.

23,45.

00,39.

01,27.

02,18.

Then, at 03,06, a knock on his door. God, if Evgeni was drunk and wanted to break his balls just for fun, Javier was going to strangle him, to hell if Plushenko was a legend.

It wasn’t Evgeni.

“Sorry so much, I know it’s terribly late,” Yuzu said. “Can I come in? You don’t have a roommate, right?”

“Sure, come in.” Javier stepped aside and watched Yuzu as he walked into the room and toed his sneakers off. He wore the usual Team Japan sweatpants, but Javier knew that cerulean t-shirt: it was the one Yuzu loved to sleep in. Under those sweatpants, Yuzu must wear a pair of the many striped or checkered shorts he wore in bed, and Javier felt a sting of tenderness to his heart.

“I’m sorry I woke you up, Javi, I wouldn’t…”

“You didn’t.”

Yuzu looked at him with a question in his eyes, and Javier nodded, smiling wistfully. “I’m nervous because tomorrow you go to Sendai,” he explained.

Yuzu smiled wistfully as well. For a few seconds they stared silently at each other.

“I can’t wait to go there, but at the same time I feel like running away as far as possible,” Yuzu said finally.

“I can understand. But I think…”

“Javi, can I sleep here?”

Javier flinched. He thought about the countless times Yuzu and him had been sleeping in the same bed – sleeping _better_ because they were in the same bed. About Yuzu’s breath and scent in the dark. How much he missed all of that, every day, every second.

“Of course you can,” he said.

“Listen, I know that it may look like I’m taking advantage of… and I am, somehow, but…”

“Yuzu,” Javier interrupted him. “Come on, let’s make your bed.”

Yuzu smiled.

Yuzu’s breath and scent in the dark. Javier was going to have a sleepless night, he knew. And he didn’t complain at all.

It must be five, five thirty in the morning. A swish of bedsheets, Yuzu’s silhouette standing up. Oh please, Javier begged, please just go to the bathroom, please don’t go away…

Yuzu slipped under Javier’s bedsheets. Javier held his breath. Yuzu lay down, trying not to bother Javier too much despite how small that single bed was, touching Javier’s breastbone with his forehead as delicate as he could.

Javier felt Yuzu’s soft hair on his skin. And Yuzu must feel Javier’s heart beating wildly, but he just took a long, deep breath, as if that mad rhythm was almost lulling him. Trembling all over, Javier put an arm around Yuzu’s waist.

“Nobu offered to come to Sendai with me,” Yuzu said. “But I refused.”

“I know. Nobu told me. Yuzu, I think it’s not the best idea, to go th…”

“Javi, would you like to come with me?” Yuzu’s voice was both soft and shy.

Javier felt a knot in his stomach untie. He dared to lightly stroke Yuzu’s back. “I’d like it,” he said. “very much.”

“Thank you.”

Yuzu took another breath, Javi rested his chin on Yuzu’s head. They fell asleep.

*****

Javier didn’t know why, but he had always imagined towns as women. Madrid was a sensual, chubby matron. Toronto a pale blonde in her thirties, shy and clever. Listening to Yuzu talk about Sendai, Javier had always figured it as an elegant fifty-year-old lady, not a classic beauty but charming and intriguing regardless.

The Sendai he was seeing now, though, looked not like that; it looked instead like an Asian Ophelia drowned under the tsunami, with sakura petals floating in the water that was running over her face, her body.

Although the reconstruction had started four years ago, right after the earthquake, the wound was still open and burning, so much that the pain of the town was visible, palpable for anyone walking its streets. Most of all in the suburbs, but downtown too, there were still construction sites, works in progress, damaged or even precarious buildings; here and there, between two buildings there was the empty space where a third one had been until 2011, the ghost of his floors and foundations still visible on the walls next to it and on the ground.

Yuzu’s agenda wasn’t packed: he had an important interview with Shuzo Matsuoka at 3 p.m., but for the rest of the day he was free to do whatever he wanted to, so they spent the morning walking through the town, in order that Yuzu could slowly get used to be there, although they avoided the district where the Hanyus had lived. Then Yuzu gathered his courage: they called the car that the FaOI production had given them and that had driven them to Sendai, and they went to the reconstructed ice hall. When they got there, Javier found himself in a quite open area, with a big parking lot and several apartment complexes in the distance; the rink itself was a squared black and white building, with a huge black writing saying FUN-TE! above the entrance.

Javier glanced at Yuzu: he was gazing at every inch of the rink, an amazed and fond look on his face. “Isn’t it the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?” he said.

“Very beautiful,” Javier said, even though he was thinking that a rink might be beautiful _inside_ , while outside it’s usually a pretty industrial, warehouse-like place. “Do you want to get in?”

“Yes,” Yuzu said immediately, but then he sighed. “No, maybe not. I don’t… you know, when I was in Toronto, and even before, every time I could I sent some money for the reconstruction of this rink.” He shrugged. “I could never send an important amount of money, but I like to think that something in there has been paid by… me. Just a… a locker, perhaps, but I like to think that I helped, a little bit.”

“You _did_ help,” Javier said, firmly. “It’s true. You really did.”

“I’m so… devoted to this rink. I just _crave_ to skate here. But Nanami Abe-sensei died here,” Javi could clearly see a shiver running throughout Yuzu’s body, “and I don’t… maybe when I’m here for the show I’ll go inside, okay? In two days. What do you think?” He was looking at Javier like his opinion was important for him to make a decision, and Javier felt suddenly proud and concerned about it. Yuzu deserved a good answer.

“I don’t think you will feel very different, in two days,” he started, slowly, to give himself time to ponder over it. “So you’ll probably come here and wonder anyway whether you should go inside or not. But today there are so many things and feelings burdening you… you can’t do everything today. So yes, don’t get in. You can wait a little more, can’t you?”

Yuzu was gazing again at the building. He nodded. “I can,” he said, then he turned to Javier, smiling at him from the depths of his eyes. It was the first smile in the whole day, and it was for him, Javier, just for him. “I’m so happy you’re here with me,” Yuzu said. “Okay, today I’m definitely _not_ happy, but… well, you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Javier said. He hesitated for a moment, then reached for Yuzu’s hands and squeezed them. Yuzu let him, and Javier felt – oh God, he felt happy. Guiltily happy. “Let’s go, then?” he asked, forcing himself to pull away and burying his hands in his jeans pockets.

“Yes,” Yuzu said.

They started walking to the car side by side, Javier still feeling sparks of guilty happiness flaring up inside of him.

They weren’t hungry, so they went to a park and just ate a sandwich bought from a kiosk – or rather, Javier ate, while Yuzu nibbled listlessly his sandwich before throwing more than half of it in a garbage can: as the time for the interview approached, he looked more and more pensive and sad. Javier felt all sparks of happiness extinguish. How could he be happy when Yuzu was struggling through one of the hardest days of his life? He was an idiot, and if he loved Yuzu he must show it, instead of… gloating over a smile. _Fucking idiot_. So he did his best to distract Yuzu, telling him about some misadventures he had in his favorite park in Madrid when he was a child; for example, the afternoon when he ran after a squirrel and somehow climbed on a tree and was no more able to get down, or when…

“Time to go,” Yuzu interrupted him.

“Oh.” Javier stopped and shrugged, feeling suddenly awkward.

“I need to go to the TV station for the interview,” Yuzu explained, then he smiled softly. “You’ll tell me later about the squirrel, okay?”

“Okay.” Javi followed him toward the exit of the park, and now he was feeling a perfect idiot again.

While Yuzu was giving the interview, Javier waited for him in a café, and when Yuzu called him to say he was done and on his way, he bought him a matcha: maybe it wasn’t the perfect choice on a warm summer day, but Yuzu had sounded tired and downhearted, so he probably needed his favorite kind of tea to get some comfort. As Yuzu arrived, also looking tired and downhearted, Javier chose not to ask any question and simply waited for Yuzu to speak. He had to wait until Yuzu had drunk all his matcha.

“Do you think it’s always good, to tell the truth?” Yuzu asked.

“Oh God, what a question.” Javier chuckled awkwardly. “Well, I’m not sure. It depends on the situation, and on the kind and importance of the truth you hide or say, I guess. But… but if you _don’t_ tell the truth, I’m afraid you’ll have to pay a toll, sooner or later.”

Yuzu nodded, looking at his mug. “I told the truth,” he said, and raised his eyes. “During the interview, I told the truth. I tried to be honest, as much as I could. But what about the people who will watch me on TV and listen to my truth? What will they think about it? About _me_? I don’t know.”

If it was someone else, Javier would have said: Don’t give a shit about what people think about it. But it was Yuzu, and of course he cared about it.

“Telling the truth has been the right choice, so far,” Javier chose to say. “It seems that people understand you. Feel you. And they support you, don’t they?”

“Yes, but now, here in Sendai, what’s the truth, really?” Yuzu ran a hand in his hair. “I don’t know what I feel for Sendai _now_. I can’t recognize my town. I feel so much love and so much pain, of course, but… but love and pain are both kind of _filtered_ through memories. Memories of a place that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Come on, you are in Sendai since, how many hours? Six? Seven? After being away for years. I can’t believe there might be someone expecting something different from you. Don’t worry.” He was going to reach for Yuzu’s hand, but he stopped in time and started fidgeting with the sugar bowl. He had held Yuzu’s hands already, while they were at the ice rink: he couldn’t touch him as often as he wanted to. After a moment, though, Yuzu’s hand reached for his, gently making it put down the sugar bowl and lacing their fingers together.

“Thank you, Javi.”

There was such a soft and bright look on Yuzu’s face. Javi knew it all too well: it was the same look that Yuzu had when he greeted Javier good morning and smiled even if Javier was still sleepy and grumpy; or when they were in bed side by side and Yuzu sighed, moved to sit in Javier’s lap and took his glasses off before leaning in for a kiss.

Don’t you dare to hope, Javier said to himself. Yuzu was in a very delicate moment; at the moment he needed not only a friend, but someone he knew _physically_ well enough to hold hands with or to ask for a hug without any embarrassment – that was why Yuzu had reached out to him… anyway, it was terribly childish, selfish and mean, in such a situation, to think about his own feelings: Yuzu needed his help, he couldn’t dwell on his own hopes and miseries.

Javier told all those wise things to himself.

And, with Yuzu holding his hand, he didn’t listen to any of them.

“Javi, can you come inside with me?”

“Sure.”

Kobayashi-san had kindly offered to spare Yuzu the pain of finding out where the Hanyus were buried: as it came out, not in the victims’ graveyard, where only a few hundreds of the people killed by the earthquake and tsunami were resting, but – as Yuzu had already guessed – in the little cemetery of a temple close to where Yuzu had been living and where there was their family grave.

Now, there they were.

They got in and, after asking a janitor, they walked down a tree-lined path, so slowly that Javier was wondering if they would ever get to the grave. He said nothing, though, and kept walking at Yuzu’s pace, by his side.

It was beautiful, this place. There were trees, bushes, a gentle breeze and a peaceful atmosphere. Like it was a pleasant, quiet park where people could find some serenity.

Not Yuzu, though. As they got closer to their destination, he started walking a bit faster and, most of all, with an intimidating determination that was visible in his pace, his posture, his face. He was trembling, though, so much that his body was nearly swaying. And Javier made up his mind: okay, enough. To hell the famous Japanese discretion, to hell all the questions about his relationship with Yuzuru: he put an arm around Yuzu’s waist, to comfort him as much as to hold him up. Yuzu seemed to accept his touch, even to lean slightly against him – but there they were.

In front of Hanyus’ family grave. A small chapel, white and simple. A place built for the moment when pain doesn’t scratch your heart anymore and turns into elegy, when it stops being an enemy and becomes a travelling companion. Yuzu’s family had died four years ago. But it was the first time that, in a few seconds, Yuzu would face all their names carved in stone. How would his pain feel – like hot oil or “just” like a pang in his heart? How would he react?

“I came here only once,” Yuzu said, his voice distant as if he spoke from another place. “When my great-grandfather died. I was… five, six? I don’t remember. And I didn’t remember this place as well. In the last four years, I tried so many times, and so hard, to remember how it looked. And all I can say now is that it was bigger, in my memories. So much bigger, and so less…”

Javier waited for Yuzu to find an adjective, or any other possible conclusion; but it never came, and he chose not to ask for it.

Then Yuzu pulled away from him. “You wait here, yes?” he asked Javier.

“Of course.”

The thankful smile Yuzu gave him was so quick that Javier wasn’t sure he had seen it for real.

“I don’t deserve a friend as good as you are,” Yuzu said.

“We’ve always been friends,” Javier replied – and suddenly he could hear Cortney’s voice: _When you’ll date someone who will also be your best friend, it will mean that you are really, definitely in love_.

“Thank you, Javi,” Yuzu said; then he stepped inside.

Six minutes that Yuzu was inside his family’s small chapel. Javier was right outside, waiting, trying to imagine how Yuzu was feeling. Javier knew the meaning of loss, sure; he had his own burden of death and grief on his shoulder. A dear friend had died when they were fifteen in a car accident, showing Javier for the first time that he couldn’t live forever, that being young didn’t mean being immortal. He still missed his grandpa Esteban, killed by a cancer, although time had turned his pain into kind of a gentle, sweet wistfulness. And he can’t help thinking about Tati, his cat before Effie: her death had been then, and still was, one of the greatest sorrows of Javier’s life. You can never completely accept the death of your beloved ones. You can only learn to live with the pain you feel, and to wonder at how much of them survives in you, _through_ you. Yuzu had lost his whole family, though; how can you go on, when the burden weighing on your shoulder is the death of your whole world?

Eight minutes. Nine.

Then, reverberated by the chapel walls, a sob.

Then.

A scream?

No.

A lament.

Uninterrupted, visceral. Feral – the wailing of a wounded deer looking for a secluded place to die, the mourning of a whale carrying her dead calf through the oceans.

Unbearable.

Javier ran inside, knelt down beside Yuzu and took him in his arms, holding him tight, lulling him.

“You’re not alone, Yuzu,” he said, “you’ll never be. You will never be alone, never ever be alone,” he said again, and he was ready, and willing, to say it again and again and again, until Yuzu would stop crying.

Yuzu’s lament turned into sobs, then into crying, then into a continuous moan, while Javier kept holding him and lulling him and talking to him – silly things whispered into Yuzu’s ear, things he would never dare to say in other circumstances, hoping that the simple sound of his voice, soothing and loving, could help Yuzu. Outside it was getting dark and cold, and a corner of Javier’s mind was noticing it: sooner or later the janitor would come to say that they had to go, because the graveyard was going to close; also their driver had appeared once, probably concerned about their long absence, and Javier didn’t want Yuzu to be forced to go away. He started telling softly that it was cold by now, so come on, they should go, and it was dark as well, so come on, they would come back tomorrow, yes, instead of going back to Kobe they could stay here in Sendai, alright?, they would surely find a vacant hotel room…

“What do you think, Yuzu?”

Yuzu didn’t immediately react, like he hadn’t heard Javier, but after a moment he pulled away and wiped his tears with the palms of his hands; eventually, with a deep sigh, he nodded.

“Okay, then,” Javier said, with a deep sigh as well. “Let’s go.”

They walked out of the chapel and to the exit of the graveyard. In the car, Javier said the driver to take them downtown while he looked for a hotel on his phone; less than ten minutes later, he had a reservation in a beautiful four stars hotel: fuck the money, he wanted Yuzu to sleep well and have an abundant, healthy breakfast.

Yuzu. Who still hadn’t said a word.

He sat staring at his hands in his laps, thinking about God knew what. Even as the driver left them in front of the hotel, and while they were checking in and then walking to their room, he kept silent, his eyes unfocused and at the same time intent, somehow, as if he was looking inside himself.

The room was an elegant double, not very big but cozy and clean, with a wide, inviting tub in the bathroom.

“What about a bath?” Javier asked.

Again, Yuzu needed a few moments to answer: he nodded.

“Perfect. So I go fill the tub for you, right? In the meantime, you could… make yourself comfortable.”

Javier took a quick shower while the water filled the tub; then he wore one of the hotel bathrobes and walked back into the room.

Yuzu were where he’d left him. He sat on one bed, staring at his hands in his lap, just like he did in the car.

“Yuzu, your bath is ready.”

No reaction.

“Yuzu?”

Finally, Yuzu stood up and walked into the bathroom. As soon as he’d shut the door behind him, Javier grabbed the room phone and dialed the reception. Five minutes later he was waiting for some underwear from a nearby chain store and for the dinner he’d ordered to the room service. He then called the FaOI tour manager to tell him they were still in Sendai, and after a hotel guy had brought him both the dinner and the bag with the new underwear, he said to himself that Yuzu’s bath was getting a tad too long.

He reached the bathroom door and knocked. “Yuzu?”

No answer.

Javier waited a few seconds, then he opened the door and peeked inside. “I’m sorry, Yuzu, but… is everything okay?”

Yuzu didn’t answer, but there was no need: he was deadly white, his lips blue by now, shivering with cold, although he didn’t seem to realize it, still lost in his inner world.

“Oh God, you need to get out of there _now_.” Javier took a big towel and ran to the tub. “Come on.” He grabbed Yuzu under his armpits and lifted him up, without meeting any resistance. “Jesus, look at you, you’ve got goosebumps all over.” He wrapped the towel around Yuzu and started to rub his skin. Neck, shoulders, arms, back… when he started rubbing his waist and hips, Javier realized that Yuzu was staring at him, and blushed. It was the first time he touched Yuzu that way, since their break-up. And it was the first time he saw Yuzu’s naked body, since then. Sure, he had seen Yuzu’s bare skin for just a couple of seconds, and there was a towel between them, but with Yuzu literally in his hands, and with Yuzu’s dark gaze on him, Javier found it hard not to think of how much he missed Yuzu also physically. Of how much he still wanted him, shamefully and desperately.

“It’s getting better, isn’t it?” Javier said only to fill the silence, rubbing vigorously Yuzu’s thighs and trying to give him a reassuring smile. “Now you can…”

“Javi.”

For a brief instant, Javier felt his legs give out. Yuzu’s voice, after hours. And Yuzu’s warm, caressing tone, after months. It was wonderful and frightening, to hear that voice and tone again. Javier wasn’t sure he could live without them again – and he wasn’t sure he could live with them.

“I bought us some underwear,” he said, and ran out of the bathroom, grabbed the shopping bag and ran back to Yuzu, “here. Just put something on, okay? I wait for you in the bedroom.” Javier walked quickly out of the bathroom, closed the door behind him and sat on one of the beds, breathless.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, he told himself. I can’t and I _shouldn’t_ want him. I shouldn’t hope. The only thing I should do is helping him, and if –

“Javi.”

Like that, standing on the bathroom door with a bright light behind him, while in the main room only a table lamp was on, Yuzu looked like an alien apparition, a translucent being from another, more beautiful world. Javier jumped on his feet.

“Why didn’t you put on some underwear?” Yuzu didn’t answer, just started walking to him. “You will freeze, in that towel.” With one hand, Yuzu held two corners of the towel against his chest to keep it closed, but Javier could still see his shoulders, his calves and ankles. “I ordered something to eat too, the tray is…” Javier couldn’t talk anymore, because now Yuzu was so close to him that he could see each detail of his face, catch each nuance of his smell, and the rest of the world had faded away.

Yuzu raised the hand that wasn’t holding the towel and ran two fingers on Javier’s forehead and on his whole face, watching intently everything he touched. Temple, cheekbone, jawline… Javier didn’t dare to speak, as if words could break that spell.

“Javi,” Yuzu said again, finally resting his hand on Javier’s cheek. “You’ve been through so much.”

Javier wasn’t sure he understood what Yuzu meant. He only felt him near, and it was too much and not enough. “ _You_ have been through so much,” he said, his mouth dry.

“But I had you,” Yuzu replied, and Javier didn’t have any time to think nor to speak, because Yuzu was kissing him.

Yuzu was kissing him.

Tender, slow pecks on his lips, waiting for Javier to lean in or pull away. Javier leaned in and opened his mouth.

Like coming back to skating after a serious injury and months of rehab. Like coming home.

They kissed and kissed, standing still, focused on their lips and tongues, and Javier could go on like this forever, living on Yuzu’s kisses, on the marvel and elation he felt kissing Yuzu, but he shouldn’t, and after a while he pulled painfully away.

“Yuzu… Yuzu, wait,” he stuttered, putting his hands on Yuzu’s shoulders. “I don’t want to… I don’t want you to feel like you _owe_ me something, or…”

“I feel so many dead on my shoulders,” Yuzu interrupted him, then grabbed one of Javier’s hands with his free one. “But if you put your hands on my shoulders, I feel _you_. I…” He shook his head, then reached for Javier’s nape, caressed it with such a softness that Javier felt like crying. “If you still want me…” Yuzu tilted his head to the side. “Do you still want me?”

Javier took Yuzu’s hand, kissed his wrist. “I always want you,” he said hoarsely.

Yuzu smiled with a choked sigh, then put his arms around Javier’s neck.

The towel he was wrapped in fell on the floor, Javier felt Yuzu’s skin on his and he swallowed all his tears and doubts to hold as tight as he could the man he loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a little bit of research to figure out how Sendai and the graves of the earthquake's victims looked in 2015, but please remember that this is a fic, so not only the characters but also the places are figments of my imagination. And if those figments are far from reality, please keep in mind that I didn't mean to cause offense to anyone and forgive me.  
> Next - and last - time... epilogue!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had been through so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is is the end. I started writing this story during the first lockdown, then I worked a bit on it last summer, and I finished it in this second, "lighter" lockdown, while I was ill. (Yes, I caught the virus, but I'm well now.) I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Thank so much to Emilia_Kaisa, who helped me to make up the plot and gave me so many suggestions; to LadyLightning, who accepted once again to be my lovely, careful beta; and to all of you for reading, commenting, giving me kudos. Until the next fic... take care, and let's hope for better times. Love <3

For a moment, Yuzuru was not sure about what he was feeling. Behind him, all the people he had loved and who were dead; in front of him, Javi, looking at him with so much fondness, kissing him with so much care. Yuzuru felt death clenching to his shoulders, and love pouring into his mouth.

_I don’t want you to feel like you owe me something, or…_

_I feel so many dead on my shoulders. But if you put your hands on my shoulders, I feel you._

Javi was kissing him, and Yuzuru felt desire flooding through his body, and life making his heart beat.

_Do you still want me?_

_I always want you._

Yuzuru let the towel fall down. Javi’s hands reach immediately for him, so much softer and warmer than terry cloth; trembling, and yet so sure on his skin. The way they moved, they ran, they pressed, they caressed, they _listened_ to his body. Since Yuzuru was in Japan, it was like some of his physical functions and needs were switched off: he had to focus on his training, and he had to forget everything about Toronto and Javi. Now, instead. Now, Javi’s hands were switching his whole body on, tracing a path of light and warmth everywhere they touched. Javi lifted him in his arms, then made him gently lie on the bed, and Yuzuru felt as if he was glowing, radiating beams of want and liberty all around. Then Javi lay down on him, delicate and slow enough not to weigh too much, and Yuzuru wrapped his arms around Javi’s neck, pulling him as close as possible. Their bodies were flushed, not a single inch of Yuzuru’s skin was separated from Javi’s. Their bodies fitted together. Their bodies belonged together. And it felt familiar but new, a confirmation and yet a discovery.

Life.

Javi raised his head to look into his eyes, combing a lock of hair away from Yuzuru’s forehead.

“Hi you,” he said.

“Hi.”

Javi delicately kissed Yuzuru’s eyes, nose, mouth, chin. “Are you sure you… want _this_?” he asked.

Yuzuru took Javi’s hand, laced their fingers together. “I’m sure,” he said, “and you?”

He thought that Javi would chuckle, instead he just took a long breath, looking uncertain and vulnerable.

“…Javi?”

Javi chuckled, finally. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s just that… I want you so much, and I can’t believe that you’re here, in my arms. But… I’m so scared, Yuzu. I’m terrified.”

Yuzuru brought Javi’s hand to his cheek, pressing and stroking his skin against it. “Why?”

Javi’s face crumpled. “Because I don’t know if I can watch you walk away once again. I don’t know if I would be able to go on, afterwards.” He buried his forehead in the crook of Yuzuru’s neck. “I can’t watch you walk away, Yuzu. I can’t.”

“Then I won’t walk away,” Yuzuru murmured in his ear.

Javi raised his head. “What…”

“I won’t walk away,” Yuzuru repeated, taking Javi’s face – Javi’s dear, treasured face – in his hands. He smiled. “Where can I walk to, without you?”

Javi just stared at him, so many emotions and thoughts running across his eyes that his irises were almost changing colour. Yuzuru kept holding Javi’s hand against his cheek, stroking it, staring back at Javi, trying to convey with his gaze all that he wanted to tell him.

_Javi, it is so hard for me to tell you those three words. I’m Japanese, we say them so rarely, and they’re so meaningful, and it’s not that I don’t feel that way, but how can I say it in English? “I love you” is such a played-out phrase. You can say that you love a pullover, a tea blend, the way a neon sign is flashing, and that’s not what I mean, that’s not what I want you to know, to believe. Can you still believe me, Javi? Can you still believe_ in _me, in_ us _?_

And maybe Javi heard what Yuzuru was saying inside his mind, because he leaned in and kissed him, his tears dripping on Yuzuru’s skin, melting with Yuzuru’s tears.

Javi was curled against him, holding him so tight that Yuzuru couldn’t quite breathe, let alone move; but he didn’t complain at all. He could feel on his neck Javi’s breath, still fluttering, Javi’s uneven heartbeat against his chest, and all of Javi’s body flushed against his, pulsing, alive. Yuzuru had had to come a long way, from the 11th of March 2011 to now. He had to travel, create ways so that he could drink and eat and find places to sleep. He had to face the unknown, and so many potentially – when not _definitely_ – dangerous circumstances and people. He had to learn his own limits, abilities, moral boundaries, and to accept compromises when life was at stake, to accept parts of himself that he’d never known before and that he didn’t like. Then he had met Javi, and started travelling along a new path where he’d found love, trust, happiness – skating. Eventually, he had had to move to Japan, through tears, rage, and homesickness; but now he was ready. Blade’s trip was ending now and here, in the bed where Yuzuru was lying with the man he loved in his arms and his town just outside the window, with a skating career ahead of him; and he was ready to start a brand new trip as Yuzuru Hanyu. Missing his family and crying for the victims of the earthquake, but carrying their heritage on and skating to pay them back. Being who he was.

“You won’t disappear tomorrow morning, will you?” Javi mumbled against Yuzuru’s skin.

Yuzuru pressed his cheek harder on Javi’s hair. “Tomorrow I need to go back to the graveyard,” he said. “I want to bring flowers to my family. Then I need to talk with someone, I don’t know who, to have my name removed from the tombstone,” he felt his heart and voice flickering, but he held Javi tighter and went on, “and to say that I want to pay for the maintenance of the chapel, from now on. If you want to come with me, I’ll be so glad,” he placed a tender kiss on Javi’s curls, “but even if you wait for me here at the hotel… or if you go back to Kobe… I will come back to you. Tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and always. You’re my home, Javi.”

Javi was shivering. “I love you, Yuzu,” he whispered. “I love you so much.”

Yuzuru felt that he himself was shivering too, and that it didn’t matter if in English those three words didn’t sound as deep and meaningful as he would have liked them to do. It only mattered that Javi needed, deserved to know. So he said,

“I,” he said,

“I love you, Javi,”

and adding that fourth, last small word, _Javi_ , he found out that – no matter if in English, Japanese, or any other language – that phrase was the truest in the whole world, and the most beautiful.

*****

There were some people walking across and around the village, but the thick snow under their feet muffled their steps and even their voices, wrapping everyone and everything in an immaculate silence.

Javier checked the alarm clock on his nightstand. The victory ceremony had ended about two hours ago, so Yuzu should be on his way to their room, but he still hadn’t texted or called. Javier was not worried, of course, he just would have liked Yuzu to rest a little bit. But that’s how things go, Javier told himself: everybody wants interviews and photos and some of your time, when you win the Olympics.

He was about to call Brian and ask if he knew where Yuzu was, when he finally got a message: _Free, at last! Meet me at the shuttle terminal, okay? And bring your pass with you!_

His pass? Did Yuzu want to go out of the village, or…? Oh, well, Yuzu had just won an Olympic gold medal, he had the right to do whatever he wanted, that night. _Okay_ , Javier texted; then he put his quilted jacket on, his boots, and walked out of the room.

Yuzu was waiting for him right out of the shuttle terminal, hands tucked in the pockets of his official, colorful Japan anorak. Tired as he surely felt, he was glowing with pride and joy; and it was almost insulting, how cute he looked with a beanie. As Yuzu saw Javier approaching, he smiled, and Javier’s knees went immediately weak. Unbelievable: more than seven years together, and Yuzu still had the power to make him feel like a teenager with a terrific crush.

“Javi! Hi.” Yuzu reached for Javier’s hands, squeezed them. “I’m sorry, you had to wait for…”

“No need to apologize,” Javier interrupted him, squeezing Yuzu’s hands back. “I’m quite used to being the Olympic gold medalist’s boyfriend.” He grinned, feeling a rush of pride and bliss. “ _Two-time_ Olympic gold medalist,” he added.

Yuzu giggled, the pompom of his beanie bouncing gracefully a couple of times. “I can’t quite believe it,” he whispered, closing his eyes. He stood still for a moment, then he opened up his eyes again. “What about having a walk out of the village?” he asked Javier.

“Okay, but… don’t you feel like collapsing on your bed and saying _bye_ to the world until tomorrow?” Javier said. “I’m exhausted, and I was there just as part of your staff… you must be totally worn out.”

Yuzu nodded. “I’m more than worn out. Gosh, I thought I was worn out after PyeongChang, what with my ankle injured and stuff, but now I’m twenty-seven.”

“You’re old.”

“Yes. Actually, I need a cane to support me in my old age, which is you. And I need some air.”

“Well, happy to be a cane, but I’m not so sure that the air just out of a metropolis like Beijing is worth a...”

“Oh, come on.” Yuzu nudged him lightly. “Let’s say I need some… some distance from… all of this. And some moments only with you.”

Javier wished there was no one, not even the very few people they bustling there, at the edge of the village, so that he could kiss Yuzu. He couldn’t, though. “Okay,” he then said, and they walked side by side to one of the village gates.

A few minutes later they were strolling hand in hand, listening to the snow creaking under their boots. The air was almost clear and brisk, pleasantly cold on their skin and in their nostrils.

“What’s going to happen, Javi?” Yuzu asked after a long moment where they had kept walking silently, content to be together.

Javier knew what Yuzu was talking about. Not the interviews and ceremonies waiting for him in Beijing until the exhibition gala and in Japan afterwards, not the skating shows they were going to join until July. He was talking about their life: Javier was retired since 2018, Yuzu was going to retire right after Words and, hopefully, his third gold medal there. In the seven years they spent together, their life had been quite hectic, what with Yuzu training in Toronto and travelling from a competition to a show to a promotional campaign, and with Javier working as coach both at the Cricket Club and in his own skating rink in Madrid. They had probably spent a good chunk of their lives on planes – from and to Canada, from and to Spain, from and to Japan, from and to each other – and their lives were not going to be quiet and sedentary, despite Yuzu’s retirement. That’s why they had a plan about what they were going to do in the next month. Theory was one thing, though, while practice looked a bit more unpredictable.

“What would you like to happen?” Javier asked in his turn.

Yuzu sighed. “I would like to…” He shook his head, sighing again. Then a mischievous smirk bloomed on his mouth. “Right now, I would like to…” he bent down, “play a snowball fight!” And he threw a snowball that hit Javier on his shoulder.

“You little brat!” Javier bent down too and grabbed some snow in his hands. “You better run, before I throw a snow _storm_ at you!”

Delighted, Yuzuru burst into giggles and ran away.

“Really, nene, what would you like to happen?”

They were in their room at the Olympic Village. After their snowball fight, they had come back to the building of Team Japan soaked and freezing, so they had taken a long bath and now were in bed, under a thick and soft duvet and with fat pillows behind their backs, sipping hot chocolate and watching the snowy landscape outside their French windows.

Yuzuru took his time to answer. “Well, we have a plan, right?”

Right. And it was a detailed, even wise plan: first of all, once the summer shows were over, their coming out as a couple. Not that they liked the idea of making a great deal of their relationship, and they liked even less the idea of causing a sensation, but Yuzuru _was_ a sensation, and it would be worse if they were to be found out by the wrong person or in the wrong moment. Afterwards, a long holiday, _very_ long – the longest holiday ever, probably – to wait for the sensation to ebb down and, most of all, to finally rest. Then…

“Sure,” Javier said, “but… you know, I think that we might see things in a slightly different way, when we’ll be… _there_. When it will be the moment to do this and that.”

“Yeah,” Yuzuru said. “We have a plan, and it’s good. It’s _right_. But I still don’t know how I will feel when I’ll really retire, and… for example, take our idea to go on holiday: it’s okay, we need it. At the moment, though, I’m so tired that the only _holiday_ I can think of is… doing nothing. I don’t want to book flights, hotel rooms, or… I don’t even want to choose a place to visit.”

“You know,” Javier said, “in Spanish, _holiday_ is _vacaciones_. And _vacaciones_ comes from the Latin _vacans_ … which means _vacant_ , of course. Empty. Free, in conclusion.”

“ _Va.Ca.FFFFio.Nes_ ,” Yuzu spelled slowly.

Javier felt his stomach do a somersault, just like every time Yuzu tried to speak Spanish. Seven years with a _madrileño_ and he still knew – or did he pretend he knew? Hard to tell – just a few words of Castilian. Javier straightened up and leaned toward his boyfriend. “Say it again, please.”

Yuzu straightened up as well and looked at Javier. “ _Vacaffffiones_ ,” he repeated, smiling.

They kissed tenderly. Yuzu’s mouth was soft, warm, and smelled of chocolate.

“Anyway, you’re right,” Javier said afterwards, putting their cups on his nightstand. “Even choosing a place for a holiday sounds tiring, at the moment.” He moved behind Yuzu. “Do you know what’s the only thing I really need?”

Yuzu leaned against Javier’s chest. “Maybe, but tell me.”

“I just need to stay with you and Effie for a while,” he added, brushing his lips on Yuzu’s hair.

“Gosh,” Yuzu whispered, with an almost dreaming voice. “You, Effie and me at home. Yes, that would be the best holiday ever.”

“At home?” Javier tilted his head so that he could see at least one side of Yuzu’s face. “Which one?”

That was the biggest, most important thing they still haven’t decided. Because of their complicated life, they had dwellings in Madrid, in Sendai, in Toronto, and they were going to keep them all; but they didn’t need just _dwellings_ ; they needed a home.

Javier could feel Yuzu’s body shake lightly in a silent giggle. “Make a guess,” Yuzu said.

“Mhm… let’s say that you’re hopefully thinking about the same place I am… I’m thinking about Toronto.” About the old, pretentious, beloved apartment where they still lived, even if now they were not its tenants but its owners. And where Yuzu still had his windowless, tiny room; he loved to sleep there, when Javier was away.

Yuzu turned on his hip, so that he could rest his cheek on Javier’s chest. “You guessed it right.”

Javier kissed Yuzu’s hair. “You know, the Millers will move in a few months.”

Yuzu nodded. “Yes, Linda told me. Are you thinking about what _I_ am thinking?”

“If you are thinking about buying their flat and tearing down the wall between their and our flat, yes I am,” Javier said.

“You’re so good at reading my mind.” Yuzu smiled, sighing contently. After a second, though, he straightened up and stared at Javier, with a serious look on his face. “Are you sure, Javi?” he asked. “I mean, really, _really_ sure that you want to live mostly in Toronto? Your family is in Madrid, your ice rink is in Madrid. I could be in Madrid too, you know.”

“You could even learn how to swim?” Javier teased him, raising an eyebrow. “You know, if you want to be a real _hombre español_ , you’re supposed to love the sun, the sea and…”

Yuzu slapped him lightly on his pecs. “Be serious, _señor_ Fernández, or you’ll have to buy me a Winnie the Pooh lifebelt,” he threatened Javier.

“Oh, God.” Javier chuckled briefly, then his gaze turned serious. “Nene, I go to Spain often enough. And okay, Toronto is a bit too cold for me, and our life there hasn’t been always easy,” Javier kept looking Yuzu into his eyes, and he could see that also his boyfriend was remembering the time when a former Blade’s client had recognized him and they’d been so close to a scandal, so damn close, “but it’s our town. You know?” He gestured for Yuzu to lean back against him. “If we moved to Madrid, it would be for me, and if we moved to Japan it would be for you, but if we stay in Toronto, well… it’s for _us_.”

Yuzu, curled up between Javier’s legs, reached out to caress his neck.

“What about you?” Javier asked. “Wouldn’t you like to at least _try_ to live in Sendai?”

“Once I’m retired,” Yuzu said, “I know I’m supposed to go back to Japan for good. But…” He glanced at Javier, with a bittersweet half smile. “I love Sendai, I really do, and it’s where my family is buried. But it isn’t the town where I grew up anymore. Then, I’m not sure that I can live in a place where I’m not even free to walk to… to a _bakery_ unnoticed.”

Yes, Javier got it very well. For years, each time Yuzu had to go somewhere – to the rink, the airport, a medical clinic – he needed to plan carefully how to escape hordes of fans, and each time he said something – about skating, earphones, meals – his words were spread on social medias, analyzed, investigated, praised or criticized. It was crazy, and Yuzu’s fame never failed to amaze Javier: he had expected a huge success, being Yuzu such a unique (and handsome) skater, but nothing could have prepared him to see his boyfriend becoming kind of a Michael Jackson on ice.

“Yes, but… you know, once you’re retired, things will probably cool down. Slowly, maybe, but sooner or later many _famyus_ will stop chasing after you every minute of the day.”

“Sure, but there’s another reason why I don’t want to live there.” Yuzu gave Javier a long, loving gaze. “It’s seven years that we’ve been hiding, Javi. And I’m so fed up with this situation. If we lived in Japan, how could we ever…” Yuzu’s voice faded.

Javier felt a shiver of anticipation run throughout his body, turn into a spark of elation waiting to light the right fuse. “How could we ever…?” he echoed, his nose in Yuzu’s hair.

Yuzu pressed his forehead in the crook of Javier’s neck, but the blush on his cheeks was still clearly visible. “How could we ever get married,” Yuzu muttered.

The spark lit the fuse, and Javier felt happiness explode in his body, in his heart and soul. “We will,” he said, leaving pecks on Yuzu’s head. “In Toronto, we will.”

They stayed like that for a while, without talking, just feeling each other, the silence like a warm blanket wrapped around them. Javier kept his eyes closed, inhaling Yuzu’s scent. They had been through so much, in the seven years they’ve spent together. They had been rivals on the ice, they had been far away from each other for weeks – for _months_ , sometimes, like in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, when Javier had been out of his mind with concern for Yuzu’s asthmatic lungs. They had been butting heads when they were too tired to look for a compromise, and they had been feeling lost when the life they were living seemed too crowded, too complicated, too much for two people who were supposed to be simply _young_. But there they were: still together, still in love. Hopefully with a long life ahead, full of projects, skating sessions, cats, Winnies the Pooh, the Steves and other friends, teas and coffees, arguments and sex, silliness, tears, laughs, doubts, injuries, dinners, everything. Full of love.

Suddenly, Javier realized there had been a kind of change in the light that seeped weakly through his eyelids, and he opened his eyes to watch outside the French windows.

“Hey, Yuzu,” he called.

“Mhm?”

“It’s snowing.”

“Snowing?” Yuzu raised his head and watched outside. “Oh God, it’s so beautiful!” He jumped to his feet and rushed to the balcony.

“Nene, it’s cold!” Javier cried out, standing up as well. “Jeez, he’s such a childish… child,” he muttered under his voice, then he quickly put his jacket and boots on, picked up Yuzu’s jacket, boots and beanie and walked to the balcony.

His back to the railing and his elbows on it, Yuzu was looking at the white sky above. His eyes were closed, and his bare neck was scattered with melting snowflakes, too inviting for Javier to resist. He leaned in and kissed the protruding Adam’s apple, causing Yuzu to screech in surprise.

“You have too many interviews, tomorrow, to get ill, my silly Olympic champion,” Javier said, handing to Yuzu his garments.

Yuzu pouted, but put everything on. “And you’re too serious, my thirty-nearly-thirty-one-year-old boyfriend,” he replied, then he turned serious too. With both hands, he caressed Javier’s cheeks. “My beautiful boyfriend,” he whispered, “my wonderful Javi.” He smiled again. “Especially now, with a snowflake on the tip of your nose,” he added.

Chuckling, Javier put his arms around Yuzu. The pompon of Yuzu’s beanie was tickling his chin, and Javier felt like running to a place where his voice would have a wide echo and shouting to the world: I’m happy, so very happy! And maybe he would do that. After keeping Yuzu close a little longer, though.

“Do you hear it?” Yuzu asked after a while.

“What?”

“A song.”

Javier lent an ear, but he could hear nothing at all. “I don’t hear anything but silence, nene.”

“Exactly! The snow is so silent that it sounds like it was singing, don’t you think?”

Javier looked at Yuzu, at his nose red with cold. “You’re right,” he said. “The snow is singing.”

“I would like to have the snow song on my iPad, so that I could hear it every time I feel down.”

“You can have anything you want, nene. Anything that makes you feel safe and happy.”

“Then I don’t need anything more than my Javi,” Yuzu said, smiling the soft and yet blinding smile that he saved for Javier and Javier only.

“Sappy,” Javier said, but he was smiling as well.

Yuzu rubbed his lips against Javier’s neck. “Always,” he sighed serenely. “And you, Javi? What would you like to have, what do you want?”

“Well, actually I have a wish.”

Yuzu raised his head. “Mhm? Which one?”

Javier took a lock of Yuzu’s black hair between thumb and forefinger. “Why don’t you let your hair grow a little bit longer? You looked gorgeous, when…”

“Are you telling me that you miss Blade?” Yuzu interrupted him, a curious smile on his lips.

Javier didn’t have to think. “I don’t,” he answered. “All in all, though, Blade is still there. When you give your competitors that terrifying glare of yours before entering the rink. When you choose to compete despite being injured. Even when… well, sometimes, even when we have sex, and you…” Thinking about sex with Yuzu Javi had to stop talking and kiss him. Then he shook his head. “The fact is…” he started again. “Well, nene, the fact is that Blade is just a name you gave to some parts of you. And those parts are still there, and will always be there, and I love them all.”

Yuzu’s smile wasn’t curious anymore; just soft, and so beautiful.

“I’m happy that I could be Yuzuru Hanyu again, seven years ago,” he said. “But I’m happy I’ve been Blade, too, because when I was Blade, I met you.” He rested his cheek on Javier’s shoulder, holding him tight. “I’m _immensely_ happy, Javi,” he whispered.

“Yes,” Javier sighed.

Immensely happy, he thought, and immensely lucky. They had been through so much, yes, but they still had so many dreams to make come true, and so much love to give to each other, under snowflakes as big and merry as their beating hearts.

“Yes,” Javier repeated. “Yes, nene. We are happy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of the "singing snow" is not mine: it came from a wonderful short story written by Hubert Selby Jr., "Song of the Silent Snow": imho, a must-read. Love you all!

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I hope you found this chapter intriguing enough to wait for the next one.  
> Please keep in mind that the Toronto in this fic is fictional as well. I looked at maps and stuff, but I just decided to adapt the town to my narrative needs, so to say. No offense intended to anybody living there!


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